GM frens,

Market’s been pretty boring lately, with no trully good R/R opportunities.
Risk is still too high in the trenches with very few winners (and they don’t last long).
Alts are dead, launches are mostly scams or failures and airdrop farming is quiet (for now, though I’m still farming a few long-term bets).

Well, we can say it’s peak bear market vibes right now.

That’s why I’m mostly just chilling, preparing for a hopefully good Q1 2026.

I’ve used this downtime to catch up on things I didn’t have time for before, like proper researching.

Recently, I’ve been diving into crypto neobanks and better ways to use my stablecoins in the real world, mainly because I got tired of my old off-ramping setup.

You’ve heard of Crypto Neobanks already, right?

Of course you have, the crypto neobank sector has experienced explosive growth in 2025, processing over $400 million ($5 billion annualized) in onchain card volumes.

I wrote a case study here:

So yeah, Crypto Neobank has been a pretty popular narrative lately.

And I’ve found the one Neobank I actually use daily now: EtherFi

I first wrote about EtherFi in the edition mentioned above, among other Neobanks.

Then it naturally became the one I used the most.
Since I genuinely liked the product and love to talk about good crypto products that have an actual use, I reached out to them for a collaboration, which we started here.

This is actually the Crypto Neobank I’ve been using for over 3 months now, and I love it. I’ve tried a few others and will continue testing more, but there’s a high chance EtherFi remains my main neobank.

That’s why today we’ll close this chapter on Neobanks (for now) with an introduction to EtherFi and the Christmas Offer. 🫡

Before we dive into this Week’s Newsletter

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Find new projects early. Don’t miss anything!

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EtherFi, the Future of NeoBanks

Crypto nowadays is mostly about investment.
But it used to be about actually spending it, creating an alternative payment system, available to everyone.
That was the ethos.

We started to see some ways of spending crypto with crypto cards a few years ago, but they were mostly just prepaid debit cards with no real advantages.

With these regular crypto neobanks you don’t earn yield, no cashback, no borrowing, you have to sell your assets,...

That’s why I liked EtherFi the second I started using it. It does all of that and more.
It’s the closest product we have to actually being a super app.
A true Crypto Neobank.

The pitch is easy: you own your crypto, you can pay anywhere, and you earn while you spend.

Under the hood, it’s all smart contracts and non-custodial vaults.
To the user, it’s money that finally moves as fast & easy as the internet.

That’s why EtherFi is one of the fastest-growing neobanks these days, if not the fastest.

They’ve launched EtherFi Cash (the neobank part of EtherFi) only a year ago, and already scaled to over $8.9B in ecosystem TVL & $160M in Cash balances.

These are just some of the good numbers. There are way more:

• $150M Total Spent across accounts

• $6.1M Total Cashback

• 1.8M Total Transactions (real-world transactions, handled by Visa)

• 43k Active Cards

• $29M All Time Borrows

And that’s just for the Cash (Neobank) section of EtherFi.
The metrics are even greater for their Staking & Yield Products.

EtherFi Features

• A DeFi-native credit card, accepted worldwide (VISA)

• Apple Pay & Google Pay support

• Non-custodial (you own your assets, you do whatever you want, no frozen funds)

• Insurances & strong VISA perks

• 3% Cashback on all purchases (10% during the ETHmas event)

• Borrow mode to make purchases without selling your crypto

• Up to 12% APY safe yield on your stablecoins (that you can spend with your card from the vault without any transfer or any action from you)

• No transaction fees, no hidden fees (1% conversion rate on non-USD currencies, offset by the 3% cashback, so you still make money)

• Strong security with passkeys

• Monthly events to earn additional rewards (that’s more money made passively just by using your card or depositing funds, I’ve made hundreds $ already)

• Good mobile App, with good security, where you can manage your account the same way you would on a computer.

The core innovation of EtherFi Cash isn’t just the card (though it works at over 100 million locations), it’s how the settlement works on-chain.

• The “Borrow Mode” (Tax Efficiency): This is the killer feature for DeFi natives. Instead of selling your ETH to buy coffee, you toggle “Borrow Mode.” The protocol opens a secured credit line against your collateral to pay the merchant.

• The Flexibility: Unlike a traditional bank loan, there are no monthly minimums. You can repay anytime you want, on your own schedule.

• The Result: You pay interest on the spending, but your principal never stops compounding. You keep your exposure, keep your yield, and avoid the capital gains tax of a sale.

• Non-Custodial & Secure: Most crypto cards require you to deposit funds into their centralized wallet. Ether.fi is different: you stay in control with on-chain features. Your crypto remains in your wallet until settlement.

ETHmas Event (10% Cashback)

I’m especially talking about EtherFi this week because there is an ongoing campaign:
The ETHmas Event.

You will earn 10% cashback on your spending.

Basically, it’s like what you pay for is 10% cheaper.
(with some limits & caps to the campaign)

And you can refer people:

• You earn 10% bonus cashback on their spending

• They also earn 10% cashback on their spending

🎁 If you want to make Christmas gift purchases, this is the perfect timing!

🔗 Earn 10% Cashback now (with my reflink)

Spoil your family this year, Christmas is 10% cheaper than last year! 🫡

The steps are simple:
→ Refer a friend between Dec 12-21
→ They complete KYC and activate their card
→ You both earn 10% on their spending in ETH till Dec 21

The Latest News

EtherFi is growing fast, and they’re also building fast.

So there are many news & updates every week, here are a few of those.

Repay debt with LiquidUSD

It is now possible and easy to repay debt with the LiquidUSD balance.

It’s impactful because it’s another way of EtherFi to make things so easy and quick for users.

The Buybacks

The Buybacks have been recurring since the DAO approved buybacks.
The latest buyback was $300k worth. Real buybacks for a real product.

The Value Flywheel: The DAO recently approved up to $50M in ETHFI buybacks (triggered when price is <$3). Revenue from card interchange, spreads, and vault fees flows back to the token, linking product usage directly to token economics.

EtherFi Revenue is currently $4.6M monthly.
And they already bought back $12M worth of $ETHFI.

We can say that it’s a running business, and among the few real businesses in crypto, with real revenues.

Largest ever weETH mint & Daily card spend ATH

300k ETH have been spent to mint weETH on EtherFi, showing that their restaking product is still showing a strong demand, and has been almost only growing since its launch.

And at the same time there also was an ATH for daily spend with EtherFi Cash Cards.
Showing that all of their products are growing every day. Restaking & Neobanking.

First week over $10M in volume for crypto cards

With over $11.75M spent with EtherFi Cash Cards in a week. Every week a new ATH!

EtherFi is quickly becoming the best & most trusted Crypto Neobank. 🫡

Conclusion

EtherFi feels like a bank, easy to use, unified wallet & card, instant settlement, but behaves like DeFi: continuous yield, self-custody options, and no banking hours.

So why would you off-ramp your crypto to a regular bank that can freeze your funds and offers you almost no benefits?

When you can:
Own your crypto, own your money, spend anywhere, and earn 3% cashback plus additional rewards with EtherFi (10% cashback for the next 10 days).

I’ve been using the EtherFi card as my main way of paying for a few months now, crypto payments have never been that easy. 🫡

Get your card

That’s it for today frens!

Thank you for sticking around, your future self will thank you.
You can follow me on X @CryptoShiro_.

Find more Alpha on my Telegram & Instagram here: linktr.ee/cryptoshiro.

If you like to learn and share knowledge about crypto, feel free to share this post!

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Nothing here is financial advice; it is purely for informational purposes.

GM frens,

The fear is back. And it’s at levels we haven’t seen since the FTX crash.

We’ve officially entered “extreme fear” territory. Bitcoin didn’t just lose the $100k level; it fell straight through it, tagging $86k and wiping out $1 trillion in value in just six weeks. The ETFs, which were supposed to be our safety net, are bleeding out, recording their second-largest single-day outflow ever ($866M).

The macro picture is in a fog. The recent government shutdown blocked essential economic data, leaving the Fed flying blind.

Because of the government shutdown, many agencies couldn’t publish important reports (jobs data, inflation breakdowns, production figures, etc.).
The Federal Reserve relies heavily on these reports to decide interest rate policy, so without them, it’s harder for them to know what’s really happening in the economy. So it is for us.

However now that the government shutdown is finished, we got a small bounce probably linked to the market repricing the odds of a December rate cut (85%).

But if you add in Michael Burry (famous for “The Big Short”) shorting the AI sector, you have a recipe for more fear leading to a risk-off flush.
Whether he’s right or not, his moves often affect market sentiment because people see him as a contrarian who spots bubbles early. I personnally don’t buy this thesis, and Michael Burry has been wrong many times too.

Yet, just like last week, there is a massive dissonance in the crypto market between the price action and the long-term thesis.

• Some say this is just a healthy correction to prolong the cycle, flushing out the leveraged longs who got greedy above $120k.

• Some say the monthly MACD flip signals a deep bear market is starting and we are heading to $60k.

• Some say the AI bubble is about to pop, and since crypto correlates with tech stocks, it will drag us down with it.

• Some say this panic is exactly what happens before the real parabolic run begins.

As I said on X a few days ago, I decided not to watch my portfolio go to zero this time. Last cycle, I rode it down 80% and had no dry powder for the generational entries. That was painful, and I’m not repeating it.

That’s why I derisked. I sold my $ETH at $4k, $3.6k, and finally at $3.3k. I took the risk of being wrong, and I did it publicly because blindly “bull-posting” while the R/R gets crushed is irresponsible. Right now, I’m not chasing candles; I’m comfy in stables, farming yield & points, and waiting.

That doesn’t mean I’m not getting back in. I’m starting to like the small rebound we’re seeing, and the thesis that BTC may have already hit its bottom, especially with fear levels we haven’t seen since the FTX crash (you know, buy the fear). But nothing is confirmed, far from it. I’m not in a rush to re-enter, $ETH is still ~40% away from my first sell and ~15% away from my last sell, so I’m comfortable waiting to see what happens. I still have time.

Also being mostly out of the market (for now) doesn’t mean we stop looking at what’s being built. Last week, we covered x402 and the payment rails that are quietly shipping regardless of price action. That infrastructure isn’t going away. But the way it gets funded is changing.

Here is the alpha: When the secondary market becomes a slaughterhouse (like it is right now), smart capital moves upstream. It stops buying tokens on exchanges and starts funding the builders directly at the ground floor.

The door that has been shut for the last four years, while VCs absorbed every early-stage round, is finally opening again.

We are witnessing a structural shift from “Airdrop Farming” (hoping for a gift) to “Capital Formation” (buying a stake).

The casino is open again, but this time, the house has installed security cameras.

Let’s dive 👇

Before we dive in this Week’s Newsletter

I curate CT Content on X.
Find new projects early. Don’t miss anything!

Learn about the Latest News, Narratives, Market Updates & More!

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This Week’s Newsletter dives deep into:

• Case Study: The Return of the ICO Meta

• X Alpha

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Today’s Newsletter is brought to you by Ether.fi

📸 The Snapshot of a True Crypto Neobank

Crypto nowadays is mostly about investment.
But it used to be about actually spending it, creating an alternative payment system, available to everyone. That was the ethos.

We started to see some ways of spending crypto with crypto cards a few years ago, but they were mostly just prepaid debit cards with no real advantages. You had to sell your assets, top up the card, and trigger a taxable event at every step.

Not exactly the crypto super-app we were hoping for.

But now things are changing, crypto is going neobank.

As we discussed in our Neobanking Case Study last month, Ether.fi is currently the cleanest snapshot of what a crypto neobank should feel like.
The pitch is easy: you own your crypto, you can pay anywhere, and you earn while you spend.

Under the hood, it’s all smart contracts and non-custodial vaults.
To the user, it’s just money that finally moves as fast & easy as the internet.

And EtherFi is already highly successful:

EtherFi Cash has already scaled to over $7 billion in ecosystem TVL & $156 million in card-specific balances within months of launch!
And as of November 2025, EtherFi Cash has processed over $114 million in total spend, paid out $4.9 million in cashback, and executed over 1.4 million transactions!

🔩 The Mechanics

The core innovation here isn’t just the card (though it works at over 100 million locations); it’s how the settlement works on-chain.

• The “Borrow Mode” (Tax Efficiency): This is the killer feature for DeFi natives. Instead of selling your ETH to buy coffee, you toggle “Borrow Mode”. The protocol opens a secured credit line against your collateral to pay the merchant.

• The Flexibility: Unlike a traditional bank loan, there are no monthly minimums. You can repay anytime you want, on your own schedule.

• The Result: You pay interest on the spend, but your principal never stops compounding. You keep your exposure, keep your yield, and avoid the capital gains tax of a sale.

• Non-Custodial & Secure: Most crypto cards require you to deposit funds into their centralized wallet. EtherFi is different: you stay in control with on-chain features. Your crypto remains in your wallet until settlement.

💸 The “Triple Dip”: Aggressive Rewards & Tiers

Ether.fi isn’t just competing with other crypto cards; they are building a Web3 alternative to a Platinum card. It’s about stacking value layers.
The “Triple Dip” means you never sacrifice yield for liquidity.

On every single swipe, you stack three separate rewards:

1. Asset Yield: Your balance earns ~10% APY right up until the moment of purchase.

2. Cashback: A massive 3% on all purchases until Dec 31st (universally boosted from 2%).

3. Points: 3,000 Membership points for every $1,000 spent, fast-tracking you to higher tiers.

💳 Choose Your Card:

Unlike traditional banks that gate decent perks behind high annual fees, Ether.fi unlocks them based on activity (points).

• 🟦 Core (Entry): Includes 1 physical / 3 virtual cards, full insurance coverage (Price Protection up to $2k, Purchase Protection up to $10k), and uncapped spending limits.

• 🟪 Luxe (10k Points): Unlocks Priority Support and Crypto Conference Lounge Access, a perk you literally cannot get with a bank card.

• ⬛ Pinnacle (50k Points): Grants Unlimited Virtual Cards (huge for running ad spend/subs), Concierge Service, and exclusive access to Ether.fi Ventures deal flow.

• Real-World Protections (For Everyone): This is a serious financial product. All cardholders, even on Core, get a suite of insurance usually reserved for premium banking including Auto Rental Insurance, Baggage Delay ($500), and Baggage Loss ($1k) coverage.

🤝 Ecosystem Updates:

The team is moving fast to integrate with the most relevant chains in the current meta.

• Hyperliquid Integration (beHYPE Boost): The app now natively supports $HYPE and $beHYPE staking.

  • The first 1,000 users to deposit beHYPE in the vault get a 20% Fixed APR boost (paid in $HYPE).

  • There are still spots available, but be fast!

  • You have until December 4th, 2025 23:59 PM UTC.

  • Deposit wHYPE or beHYPE, meet the activity requirements, and earn HYPE rewards directly into your Cash vault at the end of the campaign.

• Expansion to Ink: They just launched weETH on Ink (Kraken’s L2), bringing institutional-grade liquidity to one of DeFi’s newest and most anticipated ecosystems.

• The Value Flywheel: The DAO recently approved up to $50m in ETHFI buybacks (triggered when price is < $3). Revenue from card interchange, spreads, and vault fees flows back to the token, linking product usage directly to token economics.

Ether.fi feels like a bank, one wallet, one card, instant settlement, but behaves like DeFi: continuous yield, self-custody options, and no banking hours.

So why would you off-ramp your crypto to a regular bank that can freeze your funds and offers you almost no benefits? When you can:
Own your crypto, own your money, spend anywhere, and earn 3% cashback plus additional rewards with EtherFi.

I’ve been using EtherFi card as my main way of payment for a few months now, crypto payments have never been that easy.

And you can earn $25 by joining with my link now: ether.fi/refer/a2de69f6

Get your card

1/ Case Study: The Return of the ICO Meta

The chaos and FOMO of 2017 are echoing back into the present, ringing through the timeline where the conversation has shifted from airdrop farming back to the raw energy of the public sale.

For those who were present during that era, late 2017 was a fever dream characterized by a chaotic, unregulated environment that often ended disastrously, yet it remained the only time retail investors secured ground-floor access to industry giants like Binance, Chainlink, and Aave.

For the last four years, however, that door has been firmly shut as VCs absorbed the early-stage rounds, leaving retail investors to function merely as exit liquidity.

But the door is opening again, and we are witnessing the return of the ICO Meta, though this time it arrives with a completely different structure where shady websites are being replaced by compliant platforms, and the “send ETH to this address” model is being upgraded for more security.

This marks a potential structural shift from ‘Airdrop Farming’ (hoping for a gift) to ‘Capital Formation’ (buying a stake), even if both can and do coexist.

Let’s dive in 👇

Act I — History: From the Mania to the Crash

To truly understand where we are going, we must first look at the ruins of the last cycle to see what was built and what was destroyed.

In 2017, the Initial Coin Offering (ICO) was crypto’s killer app because it unlocked something the traditional financial world had suffocated: global, permissionless access to early-stage investing.

Projects raised over $6 billion that year in a frenzy that felt like the Dot-Com bubble on speed, and while 95% of those projects were undoubtedly vaporware, the mechanism itself proved that you could crowdfund a unicorn without ever needing a bank.

Then came the inevitable hangover, as the SEC stepped in with enforcement actions, scams rug-pulled billions from unsuspecting investors, and the market collapsed in 2018, turning “ICO” into a dirty word for years.

Consequently, during the 2020–2024 cycle, the industry pivoted toward “IDOs” for small-scale raises and LBPs for complex auctions, but mostly settled on massive Private Rounds for VCs followed by “Points” programs for users.

Retail investors were told to “do the work” by farming points instead of investing capital, but as airdrops became heavily diluted and farmers grew exhausted, the pendulum has started swinging back.

The market is finally understanding a simple truth: Capital formation can be considered the fourth pillar of crypto, standing right alongside Bitcoin as a Store of Value, Stablecoins as a Medium of Exchange, and Tokenization to bring everything onchain.

Act II — Why the Meta Returns Now

The resurgence of the Token Sale isn’t a random occurrence, but rather a specific reaction to the market conditions we face in late 2025.

• The Macro Void: The crypto market has been relatively sluggish with the “up only” euphoria notably absent, creating an environment where secondary market trading feels like a Player-vs-Player game with shrinking edges, forcing investors to look for primary issuance as the only “safe” way to secure multiples.

• The Regulatory Pivot: The U.S. regulatory stance is softening. With frameworks like the CLARITY Act gaining traction, the SEC is pivoting from ‘regulation by enforcement’ (suing everyone) to ‘regulation by registration’ (allowing compliant raises). This empowers major players like Coinbase to build rails.

• Airdrop Fatigue: The “Points Meta” is effectively dying because users are tired of grinding for six months only to receive $50 in tokens, realizing they would rather pay $1,000 upfront for a guaranteed allocation than work for free.

Act III — New Rails: The Coinbase Strategy

In 2017, you simply sent ETH to a random address and prayed, whereas in 2025, you go through Know Your Customer (KYC) checks on a regulated platform.

The biggest signal validating this shift is Coinbase, which recently acquired Echo, a platform built by Cobie, to power its new Token Sales infrastructure.

This represents a massive strategic pivot where Coinbase creates a balanced and transparent token sales platform for both issuers and users, effectively positioning itself as the “Goldman Sachs + NYSE” of crypto.

They are solving the three critical failures of the 2017 ICO era:

• Vetting: Projects are strictly due-diligenced before listing.

• Fairness: Algorithms allocate tokens often favoring smaller users or “filling from the bottom” rather than allowing gas wars to decide winners.

• Compliance: US-compliant rails finally allow American retail investors to participate safely.

Alongside Coinbase, we see a full stack of “ICO 2.0” platforms emerging, including Legion, Kaito, MetaDAO, Cookie (powered by Legion), Kraken (powered by Legion), and Sonar (Echo), forming the new infrastructure for what comes next.

Act IV — Today’s Flagship Sales

The “ICO Calendar” is suddenly full again, so let’s look at the current market leaders to see how this meta plays out in reality.

1. Monad (The Flagship Test)

We already covered the technical architecture of Monad in our Deep Dive last month (so I won’t repeat the “parallel EVM” thesis here).

Monad had a pivotal role as the first Coinbase Token Sale. The results are in, and they offer a sobering lesson on the state of the market.

The Sale: After a sluggish start, the sale eventually filled, raising a massive $187M+ from retail (on top of $244M from VCs).

• Valuation: ~$2.6B FDV.

• The Narrative: The Most Performant L1 EVM Blockchain, “The next Solana.”

• The Reality: A chaotic launch.

• Launch Day: The token went live at a ~$2.6B FDV ($260M Mcap), but the hype was surprisingly not so high, with only $50M volume in the first 100 minutes. Very low for an L1 token that is the biggest launch of the month. Then the price went lower (< $0.025) than the ICO valuation for a while.

• The Glitch: Then came the infrastructure failure. Coinbase users reported being unable to claim or sell their tokens for hours due to glitches.

• The Result: By the time they could sell, the price had retraced below the ICO entry. Many panic-sold at a 5% loss, only to watch the price bounce afterwards. Now the price action seems to be way better and trending upwards.

The Valuation Problem: Why did the price kinda stall at launch? Because the upside was priced out before the first block was produced. Monad’s $2.6B FDV Launch is way higher than the launches in the ICO era.

In 2017, launches delivered 1,000x returns because they started small and grew into their valuations. $MON is a high FDV low float token that launched almost at the endgame valuation with only 10% of the tokens in circulation, and ~50% of the tokens for the team (including eco tokens controlled by the team). So even if a $260M Mcap doesn’t seem that high for Monad, a $2.6B FDV is a quite massive valuation already, risking to dilute over time.

We can’t expect such returns at launch anymore when valuations are already so high.

Monad launched in very different market conditions (time, hype, regulation, ecosystem maturity) than the 2017 ICO launches, of course, but when you launch a chain at $2.6B FDV in a bearish market, you aren’t automatically guaranteed to buy an early access; you are at risk of providing exit liquidity for a team that just secured $431M in total funding without yet proving PMF or revenue.

Fortunately the issues at launch seem to be long gone already and things are looking better for early investors. As the market is picking up, so is $MON. Even with a slow and troubled launch, the price is now up by ~50% in 24h.

The Mainnet Launch was also quite a success, on Nov 24th. So the chain is live and there might be good opportunities over there.

I think the launch was almost guaranteed to be a success, and even if it did not 10x from ICO price, we can say now that it’s still a success. The question was always, and still is, on the price sustainability on the long run. And honestly I don’t think it will perform that good in a 1-year timeframe, but let’s see.

2. MegaETH (The Hype Local Top)

If Monad represents the steady, institutional giant, MegaETH is the mania. Their recent sale on Sonar “targeted” $50M Raise Cap but saw over $1.4 billion in interest (27.8x oversubscription) at a $999M FDV. This psychological “sweet spot” valuation allowed participants to envision a clear 3-5x return, unlike Monad’s pricier $2.5B entry.

The “Second Chance” Mechanism: Recognizing that billions of dollars were rejected during the initial sale, the team is launching a Pre-Deposit Bridge on November 25th, effectively creating a secondary capital formation event under the guise of liquidity bootstrapping.

• The Cap: They are accepting $250M USDC on Ethereum mainnet.

• The Gate: This is strictly gated to users who have already KYC’d on Sonar, reinforcing the “compliant access” thesis we discussed in Act III.

• The Incentive: Pre-depositors receive 1:1 USDm on Day 1 and, crucially, are flagged for the Rewards Campaign, which the market is pricing as a “shadow airdrop” for liquidity providers.

MegaETH likely marked the “local top” of the ICO euphoria, creating a copycat effect where every new L1 is now trying to replicate their “low float, high hype, community-gated” playbook.

While Monad requires you to believe in a long-term execution thesis, MegaETH capitalized on the immediate hunger for an Ethereum-aligned speed layer, proving that even in a bear trend, the market will liquidity-inject projects that leave enough profit margin on the table for the community.

What’s Next?

• Pre-Deposit: Live Nov 25 (likely 1pm UTC).

• Mainnet Beta (”Frontier”): Launches early December (rumored Dec 4).

• The Thesis: This liquidity event will likely fill in under an hour. It’s yield farming with a potential airdrop kicker (2.5% of supply is reserved for the mainnet campaign).

3. Aztec (The Complexity Trap)

Aztec, the long-awaited privacy L2, is running a “Continuous Clearing Auction,” utilizing a sophisticated mechanism from Uniswap v4.

• Floor Price: The auction has a floor valuation of $350M FDV.

• Current Status: Bids are coming in softer than expected, with an implied valuation of roughly ~$270M, which is about 22% below the target floor.

This presents a fascinating contradiction in the market. Legacy privacy assets like Zcash ($ZEC) have actually rallied significantly in late 2025, driven by institutional interest (e.g., Grayscale trusts) and a “return to privacy” narrative that has seen the sector outperform Bitcoin year-to-date. The demand for privacy exposure exists.

However, Aztec’s struggle suggests that while traders want to rotate into established privacy coins, they are hesitant to lock capital into complex new infrastructure sales. The friction isn’t just the privacy narrative; it’s the mechanism. In a risk-off environment, investors prefer simple “fixed price” rounds over complex auctions where the final valuation is uncertain.

4. Vooi (The Ecosystem Play)

We have discussed the Perp DEX Meta multiple times in this newsletter because it solves the single biggest headache in DeFi today: liquidity fragmentation. With liquidity split across Arbitrum, Base, Solana, and HyperLiquid, traders are desperate for an aggregation layer that unifies it all.

Vooi is positioning itself as the “Jupiter for Perp DEXes”, a cross-chain aggregator that routes your trade to the best venue instantly. It just concluded its sale on the Cookie Launchpad (powered by Legion), and the final numbers confirm the thesis.

• Valuation: Raising at a modest $112.5M FDV, which investors view as “mispriced” compared to the valuations of the underlying chains it aggregates.

• The Numbers: The sale is officially wrapped with over $13 million pledged from nearly 5,000 applicants.

• Oversubscription: That represents a staggering 2,598.11% oversubscription rate for the available tranche.

• Terms: 100% unlock at TGE, aligning with the “fair launch” trend.

The lesson here is clear: while billion-dollar L1s struggle to fill their rounds, infrastructure plays that solve immediate pain points (fragmentation) and launch at sub-$150M valuations are commanding massive demand.

Act V — How ICO 2.0 Actually Works

The days of “gas wars” and chaotic smart contract deposits are over. The new era of capital formation is defined by alignment over speed and reputation over wealth.

Here is the exact mechanics stack that defines this cycle:

1. The “Fill-from-the-Bottom” Algorithm : This is the single most important structural change from 2017. Platforms like Coinbase and Echo have inverted the allocation logic. Instead of favoring whales who can write the biggest checks, their algorithms prioritize smaller bids first.

• How it works: If a sale is oversubscribed (e.g., $200M demand for a $100M cap), the system fills the $500 bidder before it fills the $100,000 bidder.

• The Result: Ownership is distributed to thousands of users rather than a few VC funds, creating a wider, stickier community that is less likely to coordinate a mass dump.

2. Meritocratic Access (Social & On-Chain Scores): Access is no longer just about having capital; it’s about having value.

• Legion uses a Legion Score, which ranks you based on your actual contribution to the space, grading your GitHub activity (for devs), your on-chain history, and your social presence.

• Kaito similarly gates access based on “Social Reputation” and token holdings ($KAITO), ensuring that allocations go to people who can actually amplify the project’s narrative, not just silent capital.

• Cookie also has a similar Social Reputation, and token holding system ($COOKIE).

3. The “Syndicate” Model (Echo): While Coinbase handles the massive public sales, Echo (founded by Cobie) handles the sophisticated early-stage flow. It doesn’t just list tokens; it allows users to apply to Private Investment Groups led by vetted VCs or angel investors.

• The Mechanic: You don’t just “buy a token”; you join a syndicate led by a domain expert who vets the deal. It professionalizes the “group buy” meta of Telegram into a compliant, on-chain structure.

4. The “Diamond Hand” Clause (Retention Incentives): This is the new “anti-dump” mechanic introduced by Coinbase for the Monad sale.

• The Rule: If you sell your allocated tokens within 30 days of the listing, you are penalized.

• The Reward: If you hold, you receive Whitelist Priority for future high-demand sales. This gamifies retention, aligning the user’s incentive with the project’s need for stable post-launch price action.

5. The Pre-Market Hedge: This is the “alpha” strategy for sophisticated traders.

• The Play: Traders look at the fixed ICO price (e.g., Monad at $0.025) and compare it to the HyperLiquid pre-market perp (trading at ~$0.04).

• The Hedge: If the spread is wide enough, they buy the ICO and simultaneously short the perp to lock in the difference. It effectively turns the ICO into an arbitrage vehicle rather than a directional bet, keeping valuations grounded in reality.

Act VI — Where Money Is Made :

It is crucial to understand that just because ICOs are back, it doesn’t mean “up only” is back.

• The “Echo” Variance: $XPL (Plasma) printed a 7.43x, but right next to it, $INIT is underwater at 0.66x. Access is not a guarantee of profit; it is merely an opportunity to take risk.

• Low Float, High Demand: Projects that launch with tight supply and strong narratives (like $XPL) are where the 30x returns live (at ATH, because the price didn’t sustain at all).

• Heavy Oversubscription: Sales with 10x+ demand (like Vooi or MegaETH) creates a secondary market “squeeze” that drives price up immediately.

• The “Reverse Farming” Trap: Community members who worked for free (testing, marketing) often feel betrayed when outsiders are allowed to buy in bulk, killing the “vibes” and leading to a dump at TGE.

I look for a 4:1 ratio between Pre-market FDV and ICO FDV. If the public sale is $100M and the pre-market is $400M, a margin of safety exists. However, if the gap is small (like Monad’s ~1.35x), the risk/reward is much tighter. This leads me to be extremely selective, participating in maybe one or two out of every twenty potential sales.

Act VII — The Base Token Theory

We are already seeing signs of saturation because when marquee projects like Monad and Aztec struggle to fill instantly, it implies liquidity is drying up and the “easy money” phase of the ICO reboot might already be cooling off. I believe it’s mostly linked to market conditions and we’re going to see way more ICO in the coming months.

Here is a theory that explains why Coinbase spent millions acquiring Echo and why they are aggressively pushing this new launchpad infrastructure: There could be no Base Airdrop.

The market is clinging to the hope of a classic, Arbitrum-style “free money” event, but when you analyze the incentives of a publicly traded US company, the probability could lean toward a Base Token ICO in 2026.

1. The Public Company Constraint: Coinbase is a Nasdaq-listed entity (COIN) answerable to shareholders and strictly supervised by the SEC, meaning that handing out free financial assets to millions of unverified, anonymous wallet addresses is a compliance nightmare that risks violating sanctions laws (OFAC) and securities regulations. An airdrop offers zero value to their stock price, whereas a compliant Public Sale generates tangible revenue, strengthens the balance sheet, and offers a legally defensible distribution method.

2. The “Echo” Smoking Gun: Why would Coinbase acquire Echo, a sophisticated platform dedicated to token sales and community fundraising, if their intent was merely to host third-party sales? It is far more logical to view the Monad sale as a “dress rehearsal”, a stress test for their infrastructure, KYC pipelines, and legal frameworks, preparing the rails for the main event, which is the sale of their own asset to a massive, verified user base.

3. Solving the “US Distribution” Problem: The biggest hurdle for any crypto project is legally distributing tokens to US citizens without triggering an enforcement action; by utilizing a KYC-gated, disclosure-heavy ICO platform that functions like a mini-IPO, Coinbase can effectively argue that they are following the rules of capital formation, allowing them to distribute the Base token to their core US demographic without the legal ambiguity of a random airdrop.

4. Shareholder Alignment: If Coinbase were to airdrop $5 billion worth of Base tokens for free, their equity shareholders would rightfully ask why that value wasn’t captured; however, if they run a massive, compliant ICO that raises $2 billion while distributing ownership to their most loyal users, they satisfy both the crypto-native desire for access and the Wall Street demand for revenue growth.

Therefore, the “Base Token” could not be a gift, but rather the largest, most compliant capital raise in crypto history, marking the final maturity of the ICO model from a Wild West casino into a pillar of modern finance.

Act VIII — My Take

The “Return of the ICO” could have started another bull run. Instead, it has exposed a broken model.

We are asking: “Why aren’t we seeing 100x runs anymore?”. The answer is simple: We priced the upside out of the system. When projects demand 9-figure or 10-figure valuations on Day 1, the math simply doesn’t work for retail. You cannot get a 100x on a $2.5B asset without it becoming Ethereum overnight.

However, when done the right way, ICOs can still deliver 2–10x returns. And honestly, that’s much more aligned with what crypto offers today as a more mature market — and it’s still an astonishing return.

But we still need to see real signs of liquidity returning.

• Buying Spot: In this market, buying an ICO at a $2.5B FDV offers a capped 20-50% upside with an equal (or greater) chance of downside.

• The Real Play: The edge isn’t in buying the token; it’s in predicting the meta. The best bets recently haven’t been the coins themselves, but the Pre-TGE markets (predicting capital raises and Day 1 FDVs) on platforms like Polymarket or higher-volatility plays on launchpads like Echo.

So are we cooked? Or are we finally ready to admit that our launch models are broken? At least things seem to be changing, evolving into something better, hopefully. These new Launchpads & ICOs seem to be better on the long run than what we had with IDOs, and the hundred of launchpads, that wasn’t really sustainable.

But until valuations reset or liquidity floods back in, the casino has tightened its slots.

For now, I am staying selective. I’m not here to catch a falling knife at a unicorn valuation. I’m here to find the mispriced assets that the market hasn’t touched yet.

Stay safe out there.

2/ X Alpha 🫡

1. Majors & Narratives Reset: This one hits perfectly for where we are right now. Majors sitting ~30–40% off ATH sets the tone: the wipeout already happened, positioning is light, and the only narrative still breathing is privacy. The rest of the market looks like post-flush silence, exactly the kind of environment where new trends are born quietly before anyone pays attention. Extreme fear at 15 + the bull/bear indicator still deep in bear means sentiment is cooked in a good way. These resets usually take longer than people want, but once the “forced sellers” phase ends, majors become the first to reclaim strength.

2. The cleanest R/R in perps right now: This breakdown nails why the HYPE model is in its own league. When almost every dollar of fees becomes buy pressure, you basically get a protocol that auto-markets its token upward as long as volumes hold. That’s the part most people still underestimate: it’s one of the only tokens where fundamentals directly trade on-chain every day.

3. Meme: No comment lmao, I didn’t need this therapy tho.

4. The Oct-10 crash finally makes sense: This explanation (theory) ties the whole move together. DATs (MSTR, BMNR, etc.) were one of the biggest marginal buyers this cycle, and if their index inclusion is suddenly at risk, it flips the entire flow structure of the market. Smart money didn’t wait, they front-ran the possibility that MSCI might classify these vehicles as “funds,” not “companies,” which would force passive trackers to unwind. That’s why the sell-off was so violent and why bounces felt dead: one of the core bid engines basically froze overnight. Now everything hinges on January 15. A negative ruling = forced selling. A positive ruling = one of the cleanest bull signals you’ll get.

5. The real pre-TGE cheatcode: This is one of the best breakdowns I’ve seen because it nails a point most teams still ignore: a TGE doesn’t test hype, it tests whether your economy survives contact with the market. You can have perfect branding and still get obliterated if your supply schedule, sinks, or claim mechanics aren’t built for day-one pressure.And with the current rotation toward serious projects (LSTs dying, RWA/Perps/AI taking over), the bar for token launches is way higher than 2021. Good reminder for anyone building: you don’t launch because you want to, you launch when your economy is ready.

6. Sentiment at absolute zero: This one sums up where the market is mentally right now, every macro outcome gets sold because positioning is wrecked, liquidity is thin, and no one has the conviction (or balance sheet) to bid anything. When every catalyst equals dump, it usually means we’re deep in the capitulation zone where narratives stop mattering and forced sellers control the tape. These are the moments that feel like the “worst bull run ever”… until flow resets and the same people panic-buy the reversal.

7. Sonic’s “permissionless reset” is a big deal: This update marks Sonic’s real pivot into its mature phase. Renouncing all freeze capabilities is the kind of irreversible move that helps rebuild trust after the recent exploit drama, and it sets Sonic apart from L1s that still quietly keep admin levers. In a cycle where institutions are watching infra risk closely, this shift reads extremely well. Pair that with last week’s U.S. expansion play (ETF, PIPE, Sonic USA) and you can feel they’re cleaning the foundation before scaling globally.

8. The setup: brutal headwinds… but the tailwinds look heavier: The macro mix right now is basically a tug-of-war between fear (DAT unwind, 10/10 PTSD, Japan carry blow-ups) and a monster structural tailwind forming under the surface, AI capex, open-source momentum, ERC-8004 traction, DeAI launches loading, and TAO halving in weeks. My read: sentiment is so destroyed that even small improvements in liquidity flip the whole board. This isn’t the moment to chase leverage, it’s the moment to quietly scale into strength.

That’s it for today frens!

Thank you for sticking around, your future self will thank you.
You can follow me on X @CryptoShiro_.

Find more Alpha on my Telegram & Instagram here: linktr.ee/cryptoshiro.

If you like to learn and share knowledge about crypto, feel free to share this post!

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Nothing here is financial advice; it is purely for informational purposes.

GM frens,

Things are not looking good. We lost the $100K level on BTC.

BTC Spot ETFs are recording massive outflows, $866M yesterday alone, the 2nd largest single-day outflow since these ETFs launched.
Rumors are that Saylor & (Micro)Strategy are selling and could spiral to death, which is most likely not true (even Saylor himself said it isn't), still it’s the type of rumors we have in extreme fear, on the edge of a bear market.

ETH is already far again from ATH, with its ATH this cycle being only a couple % higher than the 2021 ATH. So if this market still works in cycles, this cycle would end up being a huge disappointment for ETH & Altcoins.

I myself have derisked a lot a couple of weeks ago as I was too uncertain where we were going.

I’m not scared of missing a massive pump back to new ATHs. If it were to happen it would most likely happen slowly and I’d have time to re-enter. If it ever happens fast, I’d rather get back in a bit late than have my investments stuck and slowly bleeding if we enter a bear market for months.

I’d rather keep my stablecoins for now and have dry powder ready if things go further south. In the meantime, there are tons of opportunities with stablecoins in yield farming and airdrop farming.

I might add to some of my long-term small-cap bags that I consider moon or dust bags anyway. But when it comes to ETH and other large caps, I’m not a buyer right now. I want to see where we’re heading first. I sold most of my ETH at two levels, around $4k and $3.6k, so I’m not in a rush to re-enter too early.

People on CT are so divided on where we’re heading.

• The dip is also happening on stocks, especially tech stocks. But some say it’s just a technical correction in a broader uptrend. Tech stocks that keep going up is usually a good thing for the crypto market.

• Some say it’s just noise and crypto has never been better positioned, with U.S. Policy, ETFs, Genius Act, Token Sale Platforms & ICOs, Interest Rates dropping, etc.

• Yet there is a big dissonance between the headlines and the market sentiment

• Some say the market is repricing the December Fed rate cut probability as we’re now in a coin flip scenario.

• But the US Gov is reopened, QT ends in December, and bullish catalysts are coming.

• Some say we keep looking for new reasons to keep the bull market thesis alive while refusing to accept that the top could be in.

• Some say that losing the $100K level shows that the market has chosen a direction after a long time of ranging.

• Some say we’re in a classic capitulation scenario.

• Some say the 4-year cycle no longer exists and we’ve been in a bear market for the past 6 months, and it’s soon ending.

• Some say that if this is a bear market that’s not even close to the bear market we had in 2022, and no big name has collapsed (yet).

• We even already have pieces of advice for a bear market.

And that’s just a small sample. People couldn’t agree less on the direction of the market.

That’s why I remain cautious because there isn’t a clear “buy when others are fearful” or “it’s over” scenario.

So apart from price action, we’ll focus today on a narrative that is actually making crypto move in the right direction.

That’s the x402 narrative, the web-native “pay-per-request” pattern where a request can carry a price and settle instantly. In a week where conviction gets stress-tested and liquidity hunts for product-market fit, rails that make value move like an HTTP call are exactly what I want to focus on.

Today’s deep dive: x402: why this standard is taking shape now, how it rewires incentives for apps and agents, and where the first real usage will cluster.

Let’s dive 👇

Before we dive in this Week’s Newsletter

I curate CT Content on X.
Find new projects early. Don’t miss anything!

Have a look at one of my latest post:

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This Week’s Newsletter dives deep into:

• Deep Dive - The x402 narrative

• X Alpha.

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Today’s Newsletter is brought to you by OpenEden

🧩 What $EDEN actually unlocks?

OpenEden’s token launch flew under the radar, despite being one of the only RWA projects with live revenue and a working flywheel. They’re not just selling the “tokenize everything” dream. Since 2022, they’ve built infra that bridges $5T+ worth of short-term yield markets (like U.S. Treasuries) into DeFi.

Now, with $EDEN live on Binance, they’re giving holders a direct line into that pipeline.

Here’s how it works:

• Revenues from tokenized RWAs flow back on-chain

• These revenues fund periodic buybacks of $EDEN

• Bought tokens get staked (xEDEN), held in treasury, or used to support liquidity

So $EDEN isn’t just a speculative asset, it’s plugged into a real economy with feedback loops.

Beyond value accrual, $EDEN also gives:

• Better fees + early access to new products

• Governance power over emissions, expansion, and new RWA listings

• Staking into xEDEN for longer-term alignment and higher upside

This isn’t just a “token for the sake of a token.” It’s a native asset aligned with OpenEden’s cash flows, and one of the few in the RWA space where fundamentals actually touch the token.

🤝 Stablecoin UX meets Institutional Yield

1. Their first goal: Bring yield-bearing dollars to where users already are.

Stablecoins today are static. $USDC or $USDT just sit in your wallet, losing ground to inflation. OpenEden flips that: their stablecoin $USDO is backed 1:1 by short-term U.S. Treasuries and earns yield natively. That means yield is distributed to you automatically. No need to stake, farm, or even know what a T-bill is.

Now here’s where it gets smart: OpenEden is distributing $USDO not just through dApps, but through Telegram mini-apps and mainstream lifestyle messaging apps. That’s real UX, and a chance to make stablecoins genuinely useful for retail.

2. Their second goal: Bring TradFi-level trust to onchain primitives

$USDO and $cUSDO (wrapped USDO) is a fully regulated stablecoin.
The token issuer is Bermuda-licensed entity, and its reserves comprises of high-quality liquid assets of U.S. Treasuries. USDO also delivers on-chain transparency via Chainlink RWA oracles.

Institutions want yield, compliance, and auditability, OpenEden built for that.

Its TBILL fund, which tokenizes U.S. Treasury Bills, is custodied and managed by BNY, the world’s largest custodian bank. It’s rated “A” by Moody’s and “AA+” by S&P Global.

TBILL has a current TVL of ~$225M, making it one of the most established tokenized money market funds.

Meanwhile, $USDO, the regulated yield-bearing stablecoin, holds about $223M in TVL.

🤔 What makes OpenEden different?

Plenty of RWA projects talk about “institutional integration.” OpenEden actually has it.

• BNY is an official custodian and investment manager for its TBILL fund.

• Binance integrated $cUSDO as the first yield-bearing asset accepted as off-exchange collateral, through the frameworks of Binance Banking Triparty, and Ceffu’s MirrorRSV.

• $cUSDO is live across major DeFi platforms, including Pendle, Morpho Labs, Euler, Balancer, Spectra, Napier, and others, proving compliance and composability can coexist.

Behind it is Jeremy Ng, former executive at Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and Gemini Exchange, bringing two decades of financial and crypto experience to bridge TradFi and Web3.

OpenEden is here to build a stable, scalable bridge between TradFi and DeFi. And now, with $EDEN live, there’s finally a way to align with that vision directly on-chain.

Learn more about OpenEden 👈

OpenEden

1/ Deep Dive - x402 Protocol

Over the last weeks, an idea escaped the lab and went live: x402.

We’ve been following on this newsletter DeAI and DePAI all year.
First we had agents, then robots.
But there was a missing piece: payments that machines trigger by themselves.

x402 is basically an open protocol for internet-native payments.
x402 revives HTTP’s old “402 – Payment Required” and makes it functional inside the web flow, so a request can carry a price, an agent can pay in a stablecoin, and the server can reply with the result in a single loop.

x402 is making payment as easy as an HTTP request. You know already HTTP, it’s the basic protocol your browser uses to talk to websites.

Think:

• When you open a webpage → your browser sends an HTTP request

• The server replies with an HTTP response

• That back-and-forth is the foundation of the whole web

And 402 is an HTTP response.
402 = “Payment Required.”
It was defined decades ago but never actually implemented.

x402 basically takes this unused “402” HTTP status code and turns it into a real working pattern, that can be used by AI Agents/Robots.

Until now, payments on the Web have relied on external solutions that add layers of intermediation and authentication.

With x402, it’s a radically different approach, integrating payments directly into the very fabric of the Web, at the communication protocol level itself.

This big innovation makes possible for AI Agents to operate & transact on chain.

Coinbase built the rails, Cloudflare shipped tooling, and Google wired it into its agent standards. Usage spiked right after late-October research drops put “agentic payments” on everyone’s radar. This is a rare moment where infrastructure arrives ahead of a full narrative cycle.

The spark was visible right after Oct 22, with a16z’s “State of Crypto 2025” framing “agentic commerce” as the next trillion-dollar category. By Oct 23–24, the narrative exploded across X.

Meanwhile, Gartner estimates this machine-to-machine economy could reach $30 trillion by 2030 (source: a16zcrypto), a forecast that explains why major Web2 and Web3 players moved early.

On Sept 23, 2025, Cloudflare and Coinbase formalized the x402 Foundation and shipped SDK support, turning a meme into an institution.

My goal in this edition is to explain x402 in plain language, show where value can accrue, and give you the operator lens you need to separate rails from riders.

How the web actually “talks”

The web uses a protocol called HTTP, that we briefly described before. When your browser or an AI agent wants something (a page, an image, an API response), it sends a request to a server.

The server sends a response back.

• Request: “Give me /prices?symbol=ETH”

• Response: “Here’s the result” + a short status code that says what happened.

Status codes are tiny summaries.

• 200 - OK: request succeeded, here’s the data.

• 404 - Not Found: the thing you asked for doesn’t exist at that address.

• 402 - Payment Required: the server expects a payment before serving the data.

For three decades, 402 existed in the rulebook but stayed unused because the web never had a built-in way to pay. HTTP headers carry extra instructions.

Alongside the main body (HTML/JSON), a response can include headers, small lines like “Content-Type: application/json or caching hints.

x402 adds a couple of payment headers so machines can settle value inside this same request/response flow.

What is x402?

Think of x402 as HTTP with a price tag embedded in headers.

Flow

1. Client (browser or agent) requests a paid resource

2. Server replies 402 with a compact bill: amount, token, network, recipient, nonce/session

3. Client pays, cleanest path today: USDC on Base via a facilitator

4. Server verifies settlement → returns 200 with the data

Under the hood, the server sends X-PAYMENT-REQUIRED (a compact bill) and expects X-PAYMENT back (proof of settlement), with a /verify endpoint for receipts.

Why it feels native:

x402 uses EIP-3009, which allows gasless delegated transfers. The user or agent simply signs an authorization, and the facilitator executes it on-chain without ever taking custody.

• Today, many facilitators front gas and infra; pricing models will likely evolve into tiers and SLAs as volume grows.

• The flow involves two steps, signature verification then on-chain transfer, which feels instant for one payment but adds latency across chained jobs. Session billing (pay once for a multi-step job) and batch settlements solve this at scale.

• Today’s smoothest path is USDC on Base (EIP-3009). USDT and native Solana routes don’t yet support it, meaning alternate facilitators or wrappers are needed.

Facilitators: the Stripe-like glue between HTTP and chains.

A facilitator is a service that sits between a website/API and a blockchain. When a server replies with 402 – Payment Required, the facilitator turns that “internet bill” into a real on-chain payment and returns a receipt the server can trust.

The browser or agent signs a one-time permission for a specific amount (e.g., USDC on Base). The facilitator uses that permission to execute the transfer on the right chain. Your keys stay with you; the facilitator only uses the permission you just signed.

What it does

• Reads the bill: amount, token, network, recipient.

• Executes the payment: submits the transfer on chain, handles gas and retries.

• Confirms settlement: sends back a verifiable proof (tx hash), so the server can switch from 402 to 200 and deliver the data.

Facilitators make x402 usable at scale. They simplify integration (developers talk to one interface instead of many chains), handle reliability (nonces, congestion, and reorgs), and route payments through the fastest or cheapest lanes available. They even front gas fees and infrastructure, then recover them through small fees or usage tiers.

That’s the real glue that turns “402 on the web” into “settled funds on a blockchain.” Without facilitators, x402 would stay a clever idea, they’re what make it work in the real world.

Standards that make agents credible

Payments alone don’t create agent commerce. Machines also need a shared language and identity system.

• A2A / AP2 (Google): Defines how agents talk - request → quote → accept → execute - with an x402 extension that lets them clear payments in crypto.

• ERC-8004: Anchors an agent’s wallet, reputation, and history on-chain, creating a verifiable “memory” of performance.

Together:

• x402 = value

• A2A/AP2 = conversation

• ERC-8004 = memory

That triad gives agents the base ingredients to transact, coordinate, and trust, the first social layer for machines.

Side thought: blockchains matter here because agents lack human cues. Verifiability replaces body language. A public, append-only memory gives machines a shared truth: who has what, who paid whom.

Who’s already wiring this in ? (infra → apps → chains)

On the infrastructure side, Cloudflare’s Agents SDK bakes payment hooks at the edge. DayDreams routes model calls across providers and meters them with x402. Computes and Hyperbolic show serverless inference paid per call.

Tooling shops like Thirdweb, QuickNode, and Biconomy ship templates that record x402 receipts inside common API flows. Vercel-side snippets exist, and the tooling orbit also includes Crossmint, MCPayTech, Fluora, GoKite (privacy), plus X402Scan for live tracking.

On the application side, trading assistants such as Kanza and Avos, plus Banker SDK and AXBT, embed metered operations. The Virtuals ecosystem, along with experiments like DREAM, SANTA, AURA, tests pay-as-you-go task patterns that look like early demand probes.

Outside crypto-native stacks, Stripe × OpenAI Instant Checkout and Mastercard’s agent program show how Web2 rails are preparing agent payments alongside x402.

On the chain side, Base + USDC forms the clean path today, thanks to facilitator maturity and EIP-3009. Partner facilitators are experimenting with broader EVM, Solana, and NEAR, where practical coverage depends on each routing table and settlement primitive. The spec is chain-agnostic, but real coverage follows each facilitator’s routing table, so pre-funded treasuries and smart failover matter in production.

Markers worth tracking: the x402 Foundation by Coinbase and Cloudflare for stewardship and reference SDKs; the Solana hackathon (Oct 28–Nov 11) oriented around agent commerce; and early traffic stepping from negligible to multi-million weekly requests, enough to shake out naïve implementations.

What x402 unlocks ?

It’s worth asking a simple question: what does x402 actually make possible?

Because once you strip away the technical layers, this isn’t just a new payment standard, it’s a way for the web itself to start charging, earning, and settling value natively.

x402 transforms the web into a place where every interaction can carry value. Any service that sends or receives data can now exchange money in the same flow, instantly and verifiably.

Here’s a few exemples of how that looks in practice:

• A research platform charges $0.05 per dataset. The agent sends a request, x402 triggers a payment in USDC, and the file arrives instantly.

• A developer rents GPU minutes from a cloud provider. Each training batch pays automatically as it runs, creating a transparent record of usage.

• A creator monetizes data dashboards or analysis tiles. Each chart or paragraph costs a few cents, and readers pay only for what they consume.

• A trading bot calls APIs across multiple providers. Each service is paid per request, leaving behind a clean, auditable trail for finance teams.

• Robots and drones will use it too, paying for maps, location data, or remote operation time as they move through the physical world.

Every transaction happens in real time, inside the same web flow that delivers content.
Each request becomes a tiny, verifiable receipt that both humans and machines can track. The result is an internet where value moves with the same speed as information.

Developers earn directly from usage, agents settle automatically, and teams access a new backbone for usage-based services. It marks the beginning of a truly transactional web, where data and money flow together in perfect sync.

Where money gets made ?

1) Fraud control for agent payments

• What it is: Tools that spot bad payments from automated agents.

• Why it pays: Merchants pay for fewer chargebacks and cleaner traffic.

• Example: The system checks the task an agent was given and its payment pattern; weird purchases get blocked or refunded fast.

2) Fast refunds and dispute handling

• What it is: A “refund desk” that reads the buyer’s goal, the quote, and the payment proof in one place.

• Why it pays: Less support time, happier customers, lower losses.

• Example: Goal says “24h dataset,” receipt shows “7-day dataset,” refund triggers in minutes.

3) Vendor discovery and price comparison

• What it is: A catalog where agents see live price, reliability, and speed for many services.

• Why it pays: Buyers route to the best option; marketplaces take a fee.

• Example: An agent picks the API with the best score across price, failure rate, and latency.

4) Automated treasury

• What it is: Software that groups thousands of tiny payments, caps spend, and produces clean reports.

• Why it pays: Finance teams save time; enterprises pay for automation.

• Example: 10,000 micro-payments get rolled into one settlement every 15 minutes with a single receipt.

5) Trust scores with privacy

• What it is: Ratings that prove a vendor’s delivery quality without exposing client data.

• Why it pays: Buyers convert faster; vendors win more business.

• Example: A compute service proves 99.7% success over 90 days via a verifiable claim; customers see the score, private logs stay hidden.

6) Speed tools for multi-step jobs

• What it is: Methods that settle once per session and batch checks for long workflows.

• Why it pays: Faster user experience; lower compute cost; premium lanes.

• Example: A 5-step pipeline settles at the end of the job instead of 5 separate times.

What can go wrong ?

• Cost pressure on the payment middlemen: Facilitators pay blockchain fees and run servers. Expect tiered pricing and enterprise plans to appear.

• Delays when many steps are chained: One call feels instant; long chains add extra round-trips. Session billing and batching fix this.

• Stablecoin support gaps: Today USDC on Base runs smoothly; other coins or chains may need extra routing and fallbacks.

• Money sitting on the wrong chain: Smart clients keep small balances ready on the lanes they use most and re-route when a lane degrades.

• “Intent” mistakes: The payment succeeds, the item isn’t what the human wanted. Fast disputes need receipts that include the original goal.

• Early adoption vs. hype: Real buyers and sellers exist, yet volume still comes in bursts; many “integrations” are thin demos. Track usage, not headlines.

Conclusion

x402 is one of those rare ideas that fixes a problem the internet lived with for three decades. It makes paying online as native as sending a request, a simple, elegant bridge between HTTP and stablecoins.

But what makes it powerful also makes it dangerous for investors right now. For most of people, trading this trend is a terrible idea.

The hype cycle already did its job, most x402-related tokens pumped 3× to 20× and lost nearly 70% within days. None of them have any direct economic link to the protocol. The real builders here don’t issue coins; they issue invoices.

The only rational strategy is to focus on the rails themselves, the facilitators, the APIs, the teams that were building before the buzz. They’re the “picks and shovels” of this wave. DayDreams currently looks the most credible; Oracloud isn’t far behind. Also keep an eye on EigenLayer.

On the adoption side, there’s a bigger challenge: trust. Many consumers still don’t trust AI systems to handle money, and many institutions aren’t also ready for autonomous payments. That gap isn’t technical, it’s psychological. It’s the same disbelief people had about online banking in the 2000s. Back then, Visa and PayPal built the rails anyway. Today, Coinbase, Cloudflare, and Google are doing the same for agent payments.

Real-time failure detection will soon become a regulatory must-have. Fraud at agent speed, intent confusion, and liability gaps will all need clear rules. Systems get built fast and fixed slowly, and x402 is no exception. The rails are here; the safeguards still lag behind.

So next time a project claims it “integrated x402,” don’t just assume it’s the next big thing. Ask what’s actually running through those payments, who’s using them, what they’re buying, and whether value really moves.

x402 already proved that agents can pay. The next chapter is figuring out what happens when they do. Because this time, the product came before the hype, and whoever earns a share of those billions of tiny transactions will quietly shape the next financial era of the web.

2/ X Alpha 🫡

1. TGE season heating up: This list covers most of what’s coming before year-end, Monad, MegaETH, Lighter, FractionAI… serious line-up. After weeks of flat action, these launches could reset liquidity rotation across narratives. Worth keeping an eye on which ones sustain post-TGE demand; this wave will separate real ecosystems from pure exit events.

2. Privacy narrative waking up: ZEC flipping XMR and leading the weekly gains shows the privacy sector is finally heating up again. After months dominated by AI and agentic payments, capital’s rotating toward ZK and privacy plays, a setup that often runs longer than people expect once it starts.

3. Correlation ≠ causation: Funny one, a good reminder that you can make charts say almost anything if you try hard enough. In markets and in life, data without context can create the illusion of connection where there’s none. Ice cream sales and shark attacks… or job openings and the S&P, always look twice before drawing conclusions.

4. Boros recap still worth the read: Good summary from Warhol, even in the current meta dominated by perps and restaking, Boros stays an interesting play. The idea of trading or hedging funding rates is niche but huge if adoption scales. Perp volume isn’t slowing down, and products like this could quietly become core yield infra for pros.

5. Parallel execution szn: One of the most important infra shifts happening right now. Monad, MegaETH, and N1 are all racing to solve the same pain point: execution, not consensus. It’s where real scalability lives. This new wave of parallel chains could finally bring the “onchain everything” narrative closer to Web2 speed , and whoever nails it first wins the next decade of dApps.

6. October recap: First red October for BTC in 7 years, and it felt like it. Liquidations, wipeouts, and volatility everywhere. While majors cooled off, DeFi and AI sectors quietly kept building: Hyperliquid buybacks, Meteora TGE, Eigen’s AI push etc. It’s been a reset month more than a breakdown, the kind of red that sets up the next leg if liquidity returns in Q4

7. DeFi made simple: Great post, love when someone takes the time to break down yield in plain English. Most people see “APY” and think magic number, but vaults are really mini accounting engines running block by block. This kind of education is what DeFi needs, showing that yield isn’t invented out of thin air, it’s just code, fees, and math working together.

8. TAO’s glow-up continues: $TAO has been outperforming lately while most majors were bleeding. The timing fits too: AI narratives are heating up again, and Bittensor sits right in the middle of that flow. If it keeps building subnets like Polymarket and Score, and continues to attract real AI talent, the “Nvidia of crypto” label might stop sounding like hyperbole.

9. SERV just leveled up: OpenServ agents going live on Hyperliquid is massive, it turns $SERV’s tech from theory into live trading systems with real capital. The next step, users launching their own autonomous agents through the SERV Launchpad, could make $SERV the hub for AI-driven onchain products. Worth watching.

That’s it for today frens!

Thank you for sticking around, your future self will thank you. You can follow me on X @CryptoShiro_.

Find more Alpha on my Telegram & Instagram here: linktr.ee/cryptoshiro.

If you like to learn and share knowledge about crypto, feel free to share this post!

Share

Nothing here is financial advice; it is purely for informational purposes.

GM frens,

Markets have been on edge again this week, the kind of slow-motion panic that tests conviction more than skill.

Four weeks into the U.S. shutdown, trade tensions back on the table, and capital rushing into gold like it’s 2008 again, fear is back on the menu.

Gold mania is spreading fast. In Asia and Australia, people are lining up at sunrise to buy coins and bars. Every cycle ends the same way, when everyone wants safety at the same time, safety stops being safe.

That’s the paradox we’re in right now. Search interest for gold is exploding, while Bitcoin’s been stuck in the same range for months.

It’s the widest divergence in years, the crowd hiding in metal, the conviction crowd quietly watching the next move. Historically, that setup has marked reversals, not endings. Gold runs first, Bitcoin follows.

The next two weeks will tell the story. The Fed meets on October 28, with markets already pricing a 95% chance of a 25bps cut, and watching for any hint of another in December. Add a high-stakes U.S.–China summit set for the same week, and you get a market coiled for reversal. One dovish comment, one sign of de-escalation, and liquidity could rip back into risk faster than sentiment can adjust.

So while the crowd hides in gold, the real edge lies in spotting what endures when fear peaks. That’s where crypto starts to matter again, not as a safe haven, but as infrastructure that performs when traditional systems shake.

And that’s what today’s focus is about. While everyone runs toward gold, one project has been quietly pushing the limits of speed, reliability, and design, trying to merge Solana’s execution with Ethereum’s universality.

Let’s dive in 👇

Before we dive in this Week’s Newsletter

I curate CT Content on X.
Find new projects early. Don’t miss anything!

Have a look at one of my latest post:

I’m posting direct Alpha on my Telegram Channel 👇

Alpha Now

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This Week’s Newsletter dives deep into:

• Deep Dive - Monad: Speed, Scale, and the Social Cost of Perfection

• X Alpha.

Subscribe now

1/ Deep Dive - Monad: Speed, Scale, and the Social Cost of Perfection

The market has recently rediscovered a truth as old as trading itself: execution quality beats everything else.
It isn’t about how many TPS you can print on a slide, it’s about how consistently you finalize without friction. That’s why order flow and developer attention keep migrating toward rails that feel instant.

Solana rebuilt its entire resurgence around that idea, UX measured in latency, not branding. Ethereum still dominates in culture, tooling, and assets, but even its L2s can’t yet match the smooth, CEX-like experience users now expect.

And right between those two worlds sits Monad, a project promising to merge Solana’s speed with Ethereum’s universality. Not a new language, not a bolt-on runtime, but the EVM itself rebuilt for parallelism. Transactions run side by side instead of queuing one by one; consensus pipelines so blocks don’t idle; and just-in-time (JIT) compilation makes bytecode execute like native code.

We’re covering this now because two timelines just collided in public.
On one side, the claim portal is open, letting users check their eligibility for the MON airdrop. On the other, mainnet and TGE are still ahead, while pre-launch markets are already pricing MON as if it were live, a multi-billion valuation before a single block of mainnet has confirmed. Meanwhile, more than 20 dApps are lined up for day one, spanning DEXs, perps, and data infrastructure.

That convergence creates two stories running in parallel:

• The engineering story: Monad looks fast, familiar, and production-ready.

• The social story: its airdrop rules are now deciding who counts as “early” and who gets to call the network home.

That gap, between technical ambition and social recognition, is what defines Monad’s launch. 👇

What is Monad ?

Monad is a new Layer-1 that keeps the Ethereum developer experience exactly as it is, Solidity, EVM bytecode, Foundry/Hardhat, MetaMask, while swapping the engine underneath for a much faster one, so your contracts run the same but execute quicker and more consistently.

Think of your same car with the same steering wheel, but the mechanic put in a more powerful engine: you don’t relearn driving, it just accelerates when you tap the pedal.

That’s Monad’s pitch in one line: “Solidity at Solana speed.” It doesn’t reinvent Ethereum; it re-implements it for the modern era, where latency matters more than slogans. And that matters most in use cases where milliseconds decide profits or user experience: orderbook perps and options that need constant cancel-and-replace, RFQ and intent routers that depend on fast state updates, copy-trading that triggers thousands of mirrored transactions, or autonomous agents sending micro-payments in real time.

You don’t need a new language or framework, and you don’t throw away your audits.
Everything that works on Ethereum works here, it just runs faster and more predictably.

Monad Labs was founded in 2022 by Keone Hon (CEO), James Hunsaker (CTO), and Eunice Giarta (COO), all ex-Jump Trading engineers who live and breathe low-latency systems and distributed design.

In July 2025, the Monad Foundation acquired Portal Labs, a stablecoin infrastructure company. Raj Parekh, Portal’s former CEO and previously Director of Visa’s Global Crypto Product, joined as Head of Payments and Stablecoins. That hire, plus the acquisition, lines up Monad’s payments stack ahead of mainnet and signals that settlement UX for stablecoin flows is a day-one priority.

What the EVM does today ?

Imagine Ethereum as a supermarket with one checkout line. Everyone waits their turn, one transaction after another. It keeps the books perfectly consistent, every cashier (node) agrees on who paid what. But when the store gets crowded, the line grows. Some customers wait, some give up, and the total throughput stalls.

That’s how the EVM works today: single-threaded, one transaction queue, guaranteed order, and massive bottlenecks during volatility.

Picture a spike on a perp exchange: thousands of traders cancel and replace orders at once. Every one of those hits the same queue. Some get through, others wait seconds or fail altogether. For retail users, that’s annoying and for market makers, it’s money lost.

Monad’s insight was simple: you can preserve Ethereum’s logic while fixing its architecture. Instead of one lane, you open many, parallel execution, pipelined consensus, and smarter scheduling.

That’s what turns the EVM from a single cashier into an automated network of lanes working in sync.

What Monad changes ?

As we’ve seen, Ethereum today works like a single-threaded machine. It executes one transaction at a time, perfectly and sequentially, but at the cost of speed. Monad’s approach is to rebuild that engine so it can think and act in parallel, processing multiple tasks at once without breaking consistency.

Pipelined block production

Classic blockchains follow a strict rhythm: propose → agree → execute → finalize.

Each phase waits for the one before it to finish. While block N is being executed, block N+1 is already being proposed and verified. The result is less idle time and more useful work each second.

Example: imagine a kitchen plating table A while prepping table B and taking orders for table C. Service feels continuous instead of stop-and-go. That’s how Monad keeps the chain busy, execution, validation, and proposal all happening at once.

Optimistic parallel execution

Instead of one checkout counter like Ethereum, Monad opens many lanes. Transactions that touch different parts of the state can run simultaneously across CPU cores. If two transactions need the same data, a scheduler steps in, decides the right order, and re-executes the affected one.

Example: 5,000 swaps happening across different token pairs can be processed together. Only the ones hitting the same pair need coordination. The outcome is the same, consistent and verified, but the work happens in parallel.

JIT-compiled EVM

The VM notices which pieces of contract code run all the time and compiles those hot paths to machine code on the fly. You keep Solidity and your tools and the engine simply runs your code faster.

Example: After making the same coffee hundreds of times, the barista no longer checks the recipe and finishes quicker.

Under the hood, Monad adds MonadBFT (a consensus protocol tuned to avoid tail forks), RaptorCast (faster block dissemination), and MonadDB (a state database designed so parallel workers aren’t starved by I/O).

These pieces exist to make parallelism practical, not just in benchmarks, but when many users hammer the same markets at once.

If you want to dive deeper 👈

Why the timing matters ?

Most Layer-1s launch with hype first and products later. Monad did the opposite.
Its public testnet, live since February 2025, has already processed 2.4 billion+ transactions with a 98% success rate and fees around half a cent. In August, it hit 34 million transactions in a single day, numbers few mainnets ever reach.

Testnet data stats 👈

What makes that remarkable is how accessible it is. Validators don’t need datacenters; just a Ryzen 7950X, 32 GB of RAM, and decent internet, about $1,500 total. That design keeps the network fast without sacrificing decentralization, a rare balance in the “speed wars.”

The validator testnet now spans 19 countries and 100–150 nodes, showing real decentralization. And the ecosystem is already plugged in: Circle USDC (CCTP v2), Chainlink SCALE, LayerZero, Orderly Network, PancakeSwap v4, and 19+ wallets from MetaMask to Phantom. Over 240 projects are building across DeFi, gaming, and data, backed by $60M+ in dev programs.

That’s why Monad’s launch feels different, it already looks finished, but that also raises the bar. The claim portal is live, letting users check airdrop eligibility even before mainnet.

Pre-launch markets on Hyperliquid are already pricing MON at $0.13–$0.15, implying a $13–15B FDV. That’s “blue-chip” valuation before the network even launches (it’s premarket so really unstable).

So the timing matters because expectation now outweighs speculation. Monad has proven the tech and gathered the builders; the question is whether it can turn that perfection on paper into an experience that actually feels instant.

The fracture: “community first”, until it wasn’t

Here’s the part you can’t explain away with performance metrics or validator charts: the airdrop broke the social contract.

• Out of a community measured in the hundreds of thousands, roughly 5,500 wallets from inside Monad qualified via the portal, about 0.74% of the Discord footprint.

• Roughly 225,000 external wallets from the broader crypto/NFT world received allocations.

• Long-time testers and role-holders (for example, ~6.9k Recogniser/FA), the folks who ran nodes, stress-tested, translated docs, and carried the narrative, widely report they were excluded.

• Entire regions (e.g., India) were left out due to compliance.

• To make matters worse, malicious ads surfaced in the official Telegram during the portal window, compounding distrust on the very day people were told to check eligibility.

The Foundation’s logic was clear on paper: testnets are easy to farm, rewarding broader on-chain activity helps fight sybil behavior, and distribution beyond the core audience encourages network effects.

But in practice, it collided with a year of “community first” messaging. SBTs were distributed to recognize contributors. “Early snapshot” campaigns urged users to stay active. Official posts reinforced the idea that sustained participation would matter.

So when the airdrop came, it wasn’t seen as a data filter, it was seen as a betrayal.
What began as an anti-sybil initiative turned into what many called reverse farming:
the community provided unpaid labor, testing, and marketing, and outsiders received the reward.

You can recover from this, but not through slogans. A social license isn’t granted once, it’s renewed every day through visible action.

If Monad wants to fix this gap between technical ambition and social recognition, it starts with two steps:

• Retroactive rewards for verified contributors and node operators.

• Transparent dashboards showing how allocations were calculated.

Where does Monad sits in the fast-execution arena?

Monad’s edge is clear: a native EVM rebuilt for real speed that targets a ~1-second finality without rewrites, giving Solidity teams the lowest migration cost.

Against Solana, Monad must simply match the “feels-instant” UX while keeping EVM tooling; if it does, the main reason to leave EVM land disappears.

The closest comparator is Sei v2, also a parallel EVM, where the race is about variance under contention and ecosystem depth; Neon proves demand for EVM on Solana but adds an adapter layer that Monad avoids.

The broader lesson from Aptos/Sui (tech ≠ adoption) and the reality of Ethereum L2s (safe, liquid, but with a latency ceiling) frame Monad as the high-beta execution bet: huge upside if it delivers, no slack if it stumbles.

Conclusion: What to watch ?

The story of Monad sits at the intersection of two truths: a chain that performs like an exchange engine, and a community still waiting for proof that performance alone is enough to build trust.

There’s still no token live, yet the market already values $MON at around $13–15 billion FDV, based on pre-launch trading. That’s blue-chip territory before a single mainnet block is finalized. Expectations are enormous, and that’s both a compliment and a curse. It means the real upside likely shifts below the L1, into the ecosystem projects that will define the user experience: perps venues, RFQ routers, liquidity layers, and agent networks priced in the $5–$50 million range.

The next major milestone is the mainnet launch planned for late 2025, and it will be the first real test of Monad’s promise. Testnets can simulate performance, but mainnet exposes reality: how validators hold under load, how apps behave with real money, and whether latency stays under one second when the network faces real volatility.

The question now isn’t whether Monad can run fast, it’s whether it can stay credible while doing it.

A few things will decide that:

• Correctness: Monad’s biggest claim is perfect EVM equivalence while running transactions in parallel and compiling on the fly. If stress tests keep showing byte-for-byte consistency, that narrative solidifies.

• Operations: Pipelined and parallel systems are harder to debug. Stability reports, incident transparency, and consistent node performance will separate hype from production readiness.

• Liquidity: Speed doesn’t attract order flow by itself. Day-one depth on perps and DEXs, market-maker commitments, and smooth RFQ integrations will tell if traders actually move.

• Social license: The airdrop fallout still lingers. Retroactive rewards or verifiable community grants could rebuild credibility faster than any benchmark.

• Timing: Mainnet and TGE are still ahead while competitors keep shipping. True latency under load, rollback rates on hot state, and validator specs will show if Monad’s edge is sustainable.

If these checkpoints are met, if speed, reliability, and trust converge, the upside will cluster around the best ecosystem names rather than the base token.

Monad is the purest form of a thesis that’s been building for years, don’t fight EVM culture, just modernize it. The engineering is world-class. The execution, socially and operationally, is what’s left to prove.

If Monad delivers what it promises and rebuilds goodwill in the process, it becomes the default home for latency-sensitive EVM apps, and the idea that “EVM is slow” finally retires. If it doesn’t, it risks joining a long line of technically brilliant chains that never earned the right to be called a network.

Performance wins attention; trust wins history. Monad has one shot to do both.

2/ X Alpha 🫡

1. Morning flow check: Pretty good read on the market mood, sentiment crushed, gold flexing, and crypto still digesting the chaos. Feels like that quiet stretch where attention drifts from noise back to builders. TAO’s bounce, Lighter hype, DeFi resilience, all hints the real rotation is forming under the surface. Macro still favors hard assets, so patience and positioning matter more than entries right now. Survive the bleed, stay exposed, and let time compound.

2. Meteora TGE vibes: Really like this launch model, instead of another static airdrop, liquidity is the distribution. It forces real participation and creates depth from block one. With $855M TVL and $266B+ volume already, $MET feels like a natural next step for Solana’s liquidity layer. The fact it’s tied to JUP stakers too gives it extra reach, this could be one of the most interesting TGE structures of the cycle.

3. Launchpad meta heating up: The fundraising game is evolving fast. Between Echo’s open sales, Legion’s merit scores, and MetaDAO’s futarchy twist, we’re seeing structure replace chaos. After years of VC dominance, on-chain raises with real transparency are back, and this time, they might stick.

4. DeFi latest: Busy week across the board, from Hyperliquid’s HIP-3 upgrade to Robinhood’s stock tokens on Arbitrum and Sonic’s $6M buyback. Feels like DeFi infra is leveling up everywhere at once: smarter perps, deeper liquidity, and more bridges to TradFi. The pace of real product launches right now is wild.

5. INFINIT S3 is live 🪂: Season 3 just dropped, double the rewards, double the winners. This is my post, and I’ve been yapping about $IN since day one because the fundamentals keep delivering. With 2M $IN up for grabs and a packed Q4, this is one of the few airdrop campaigns that actually rewards effort and consistency. If you missed the first two, this is the one to join.

6. Prediction markets as leveraged plays: Interesting angle here, instead of buying tokens, you can ride sentiment via Polymarket. The odds charts often move faster than the token itself, and that leverage on changing sentiment can outperform spot during recoveries. As the prediction market meta grows, this might quietly become one of the smartest ways to trade narratives.

7. Decentralized AI is waking up: Good thread. Open-source AI infra is quietly gaining momentum while everyone’s busy watching the big three. If the next wave of intelligence gets built on decentralized rails, it won’t just reshape AI, it’ll redefine who captures the value. A reminder that the real AI revolution might come from the edges, not the giants.

8. EtherFi’s quiet pivot: EtherFi is blurring lines between DeFi and fintech, from restaking to cards and yield vaults, it’s shaping into a full crypto neobank. I covered this shift in last week’s newsletter on neobanks, and EtherFi fits the thesis perfectly: products with real users, steady revenue, and room for token repricing once unlock pressure fades.

That’s it for today frens!

Thank you for sticking around, your future self will thank you. You can follow me on X @CryptoShiro_.

Find more Alpha on my Telegram & Instagram here: linktr.ee/cryptoshiro.

If you like to learn and share knowledge about crypto, feel free to share this post!

Share

Nothing here is financial advice; it is purely for informational purposes.

GM frens,

WTF happened ?

Friday’s crash will go down as the most violent liquidation event in crypto history.
$19B wiped in minutes, $400B in market cap gone overnight. BTC dropped from $120K to $104K, ETH dropped 20%, and some alts got erased. For a moment, it felt like 2021 flashbacks on steroids.

I made a full recap on my x account 👈

The trigger was almost absurd: Trump announcing a potential additional 100% tariff on Chinese imports. Trad markets were closed shortly after, crypto was still open, and panic needed an outlet, so it hit here. Within minutes, 1.6M traders got liquidated.

But let’s be real, the tariff tweet wasn’t the only cause, but the spark because the fuel was already there. Open interest was overloaded, leverage was everywhere, and risk was disguised behind hedged perps. The market wasn’t euphoric, it was just crowded and fragile. Everyone chasing the same narrative, perp DEX airdrops, yield meta, leveraged bets, until one small nudge flipped the whole stack.

Still, this was less a crash of conviction and more a systems failure. The blockchains worked flawlessly; it was the centralized rails, oracles, exchanges, market makers, that froze or glitched. That’s the lesson: the infra we built to escape TradFi’s fragility just got tested, and it passed.

Crypto didn’t break.. but everything around it did.

Now that the dust’s settling, it doesn’t feel like the end of the cycle, more like a violent reset. The kind that shakes out the excess and reloads the next phase.

Things are already looking way better, and we saw some massive bounces.

See you at the U.S. market open on Monday for the next episode of this circus. 😅

Friday reminded us of what the real user ask: not “more coins,” just money that works when pipes clog. When fees spike and venues wobble, capital flows to stablecoins. The rails are set; what’s missing is the wrapper that makes those dollars usable every day, paychecks, cards, payouts, yield, without drama.

The trend is now obvious: Revolut UX on crypto rails.

One balance that earns while idle, taps to pay anywhere, moves cross-border in minutes, and lets you pick custody with sane recovery. EtherFi is pushing the DeFi-native version, Mantle UR is the compliant bridge, and Plasma One is the stablecoin bank for Emerging-Market corridors.

So today we’re zooming in on neobanking, why this packaging wins, who’s actually shipping, and how stablecoin plumbing turns into a real consumer bank stack.

Let’s dive 👇

Before we dive in this Week’s Newsletter

I curate CT Content on X.
Find new projects early. Don’t miss anything!

One of my latest post:

I’m posting direct Alpha on my Telegram Channel 👇

Alpha Now

My Linktree to have access to all my Content & Alpha on X, Instagram & Telegram: https://linktr.ee/cryptoshiro

This Week’s Newsletter dives deep into:

• Case Study: The Rise of Neobanking - From Revolut to Crypto Super Apps

• X Alpha

Subscribe now

1/ Case Study: The Rise of NeoBanking - From Revolut to Crypto Super Apps

Every few cycles, crypto finds a way to repackage the same ideas in a form the world can finally digest.
Stablecoins were the proof of concept: fiat that move at internet speed.
Neobanking is the packaging, the interface that finally makes those dollars usable.

In 2024, stablecoins settled over tens of trillions, more than Visa and Mastercard combined, but most of that flow still happens between exchanges, traders, and protocols, not consumer usage. The next step is obvious: move that liquidity to where people actually live, inside financial apps.

That’s what neobanking is about: merging the speed and openness of crypto rails with the familiarity of banking UX.

Let’s dive in 👇

Act I - How Revolut Changed Everything

Before the word neobank even existed, banks were physical. You needed an appointment to open an account, a pen to sign ten pages, and three business days for a transfer to clear.

Then came the neobank wave: Revolut, Wise, Chime, N26, Nubank. They were fast, digital, and mobile-first. Revolut especially stood out, sleek design, instant notifications, cards that worked globally, and multi-currency accounts that let you travel without worrying about conversions.

They built a “mobile-first bank”:

• Open an account in minutes.

• Spend abroad without fees.

• Get real-time notifications on every transaction.

• Swap currencies instantly.

Revolut didn’t reinvent banking; it reinvented trust through experience. It taught users that a digital app could replace a marble building.

By 2025, Revolut had tens of millions of users and blended banking with crypto, trading, savings vaults, and a debit card that felt like your whole financial life in one app. Modern front-end, but the back-end was still SWIFT-era.

But even that innovation had limits, transfers still waited for settlement windows, FX rates changed overnight, and the infrastructure underneath remained stuck in the SWIFT era. Revolut was modern in design but traditional at its core.

The realization came slowly: the real upgrade wouldn’t come from banks adding crypto features, it would come from crypto absorbing banking itself.

The question became: what if that interface ran on crypto rails instead?

Act II - The Stablecoin Era: the rail we were missing

We talked about stablecoins before, but things are getting even more real now.
Money, thanks to stablecoins, is finally following the same path as the internet.

Nowadays, on-chain dollars are pushing trillions per month, and not only “DeFi degen” flow, but also real payments, merchant payouts, payroll, treasury moves. Stablecoins became the invisible plumbing of crypto: the dollar’s 24/7 clone that never asks what day it is, what country you’re in, or whether the clearinghouse is closed.

Here’s why that unlocked everything:

• Speed: A designer in Buenos Aires invoices USDC at 6pm Friday and gets paid in minutes, not “see you Monday, maybe.”

• Cost: A dev in Lagos skips the 7–10% remittance tax and moves value for cents.

• Control: Funds live in self-custody if you want them to, no holds, no “please wait 3–5 business days.”

• Yield: Idle balances don’t rot, on-chain, they can earn automatically while remaining liquid.

• Composability: Dollars that can plug into anything, lending, swaps, cards without re-onboarding.

This is the moment crypto becomes a better payments rail. The UX shift came from a simple mental model, a dollar that behaves like an API. Once you feel that, it’s hard to go back to batch files, cut-off times, and bank holidays.

And that leads to the obvious next step. Most people don’t care about “USDC vs. USDT,” they care about getting paid, saving, and spending. So the question became: what’s the interface that puts this rail in front of normal people?

That’s the job of crypto neobanks, take the stablecoin spine, wrap it in a clean app, and give users one place to send, save, spend, and earn. That’s where we’re heading, and it’s why the next act focuses on the products turning this rail into a daily habit.

Act III - From Cards to Smart Wallets

2014–2016: “Swipe your Bitcoin” era: Before anyone said “crypto neobank,” a couple of projects tried to let users spend BTC like cas, via Visa or Mastercard rails. Xapo, SpectroCoin or Wirex shipped the earliest Visa/Mastercard programs. It worked, until you looked under the hood. These were custodial wallets with prepaid cards issued by a handful of fintech program managers.
Great demo, fragile stack.

2017–2018: The first boom.. and the first rug: ICOs funded a wave of “bank-in-an-app” pitches. Monaco (later Crypto.com) promised metal cards and interbank FX; TenX raised big on “spend your crypto anywhere.” People actually used them. Then Visa cut off WaveCrest (the main card issuer for half the industry) and the lights went out overnight. Lesson learned: if your “neobank” is really just a skin on someone else’s license, you’re one email away from zero.

2019–2020: The non-custodial experiment: Monolith (born TokenCard) tried something braver: a smart-contract wallet + Visa card. You held keys, funds lived on Ethereum, a card sat on top. Clunky? Sometimes. Important? Yes. It proved a bank-like UX could be keyed to your wallet, not an exchange account. In parallel, Revolut added a custodial “buy crypto” button (training wheels for millions), while Bitwala/Nuri in Germany blended bank accounts with Bitcoin savings, until they didn’t survive the bear. More lessons: UX wins attention; infrastructure resilience keeps it.

2020–2022: DeFi shows the missing piece: Uniswap, Aave, and friends taught everyone that balances can work while they sit. Suddenly “checking vs. savings” looked archaic, why shouldn’t idle cash earn by default? But cards and banking rails were still off-chain bolt-ons. The vision was clear; the plumbing wasn’t ready.

2023–2024: Stablecoins hit escape velocity : USDC/USDT volume went parabolic and quietly normalized a new default: dollars that move at internet speed. Now the question flipped from “can I spend crypto?” to “why am I still waiting two days for a wire?” This is where “crypto neobank” stopped being a slide and became a roadmap: keep the Revolut-simple front end, move the back end fully on-chain.

What that looks like in practice (today):

• You open an app that looks like a normal bank. The “USD” you see are tokenized dollars sitting in audited smart contracts.

• FX is instant: it’s a real-time swap, not a slow bank wire. Transfers settle now, not by the end of the day.”

• Your idle balance earns by default, no separate “savings account” to toggle.

• You pick custody: keep your own keys with guardrails (spend limits, recovery), or let the app hold funds for convenience.

• It’s 24/7/365. No cut-offs, no SWIFT codes, no “come back Monday.”

That’s the through-line: from card skins and custodial shortcuts → to smart-wallet experiments → to stablecoin rails → to actual banking primitives living on-chain.

If you want the full neobanks story 👈

And this is where the current wave slots in: teams like EtherFi (yield that you can spend), Mantle UR (regulated fiat bridge with on-chain guts), Plasma One (stablecoin-native in emerging markets), Tria (gasless self-custody + cards). Different angles, same goal.

Act IV - The Builders of the Neobank Era

If stablecoins laid the rails and crypto neobanks defined the direction, these are the builders driving the train. Each approaches the problem differently, some from DeFi, some from regulation, but all converge on the same goal: rebuilding banking for an internet-native world.

EtherFi - When “my bank app” runs on DeFi

EtherFi is the cleanest snapshot of what a crypto neobank feels like day-to-day. The pitch isn’t “come farm a vault,” it’s: open an app, see a balance, tap your card, keep earning while you spend. Under the hood it’s all smart contracts; to the user, it’s just money that finally behaves like the internet.

What makes it a neobank :

• One balance, many jobs. Your “checking” lives in EtherFi Cash. It can hold ETH, USDC, or Liquid USD (targeting ~10% APY), and that same pot funds your card swipes, online checkouts, and transfers.

• Spend without selling. Two modes:

  • Direct Pay: spend stablecoins straight from the vault; yield continues until the moment of payment.

  • Borrow Mode: keep assets compounding and open a secured credit line for spending; you pay interest, but your principal keeps earning.

• Real rails attached. Card works at normal merchants; fiat rails (IBAN/SWIFT/SEPA where supported) bridge in/out so you can pay rent, invoices, or payroll without detouring through a CEX.

• Autopilot FX. Traveling or paying a EUR invoice from USD stablecoin? It routes through on-chain liquidity, not a wire queue. Feels instant.

• Self-custody with guardrails. Smart-contract vaults, passkey login, spend limits, freeze/unfreeze, and recovery options. You can keep keys, or click into a managed experience if you prefer convenience.

If you want some data 👈

Traditional neobanks put a slick skin on old rails. EtherFi flips it: DeFi yields and programmability first, card and fiat after. That’s why the experience compresses into one balance and one interface.

Concrete flows (so you can picture it)

• Freelancer flow: Get paid in USDC Friday night → it’s immediately spendable on the card → the unspent portion keeps earning until you buy groceries Sunday.

• Traveler flow: Hold Liquid USD → tap in Paris → behind the scenes it swaps into EUR and settles; you didn’t open a FX tab or got an abdsurd conversion rate.

• Power user flow: Park ETH/USDC in vaults → enable Borrow Mode → keep yield on collateral while the card pulls from a revolving, over-collateralized line.

• Usage, not hype: daily spend in the high six figures+; tens of thousands of cards issued; steady DAUs.

• Revenue ↔ token flywheel: card interchange + spread + vault fees fund buybacks; as spend and balances rise, buybacks scale. It links product use to token economics in a way most “DeFi cards” never managed.

Where it goes next

• More currencies, more countries: multi-currency support + broader banking rails pushes EtherFi from crypto card → everyday account.

• Tokenized assets as collateral: think holding tokenized stocks/treasuries, borrowing against them, and spending, without breaking the yield stream.

• Agent automations: simple rules like “sweep idle >$500 into Liquid USD,” “auto-rebalance FX at <0.5% slippage,” “pay recurring bills from yield only.”

It feels like a bank but behaves like DeFi: one wallet, one card, continuous yield, no banking hours. This is what “neobanking” looks like when the balance sheet lives onchain.

Mantle UR- the fiat bridge that actually feels on-chain

We’ve talked about Mantle in this newsletter but also a lot on X, UR is part of the Mantle ecosystem and is the piece that makes the “crypto neobank” idea click for normal people.

UR is a borderless money app that looks like a bank and moves like crypto. You open an account, get a Swiss multi-currency IBAN (EUR/CHF/USD/RMB), a Mastercard you can add to Apple/Google/WeChat/Alipay/Samsung Pay, and you can push funds over SWIFT/SEPA/SIC or over Ethereum/Arbitrum. One balance, two sets of rails.

Launch + rollout: Early contributors got in June 19, 2025; public access followed in Q3 2025. It’s now live in 45+ countries. At launch they leaned into the wedge that matters: 0% off-ramp fees, bank-rate FX, and a single account where fiat and crypto sit side-by-side.

How it actually feels to use:

• Get paid in EUR to your IBAN → tap to swap into USDC/USDe → keep earning while your card works everywhere.

• Send value the cheapest way: bank transfer to a fiat friend, stablecoin to a crypto friend, same app, same balance.

• Travel with one wallet, no wire cut-offs.

• UR is crypto-first under the hood (Mantle Network), with on-chain, tokenized deposits and self-custody wallets spun up in two clicks (Turnkey + biometrics). Fiat isn’t bolted on later; it’s treated as a peer asset to stables from day one.

• On-chain transparency: movements settle on Mantle for speed/verifiability; you’re not guessing what’s behind the screen.

• KYC/AML is handled (Swiss-regulated partner), so the front door stays open while the back end stays programmable.

Who this unlocks:

• Global earners (freelancers/remote teams) who need IBANs and stables in one place.

• Crypto natives who want yield by default but card-tap UX in the real world.

• DAOs/founders who need compliant fiat rails plus on-chain treasury moves without six dashboards.

Why this matters for Mantle (alpha): UR turns Mantle into a financial OS: fiat flows in, stables flow out, and $MNT sits in the middle as the network that settles it all. As UR adds native yield, credit, and Mantle-native products (mETH, MI4), you get a proper banking chain, not just another L2.

UR is the first mainstream-feeling app where one account handles fiat + crypto, with zero off-ramp fees, real IBANs, and on-chain settlement you can actually audit. It’s what a neobank looks like when you start from crypto and add TradFi, rather than the other way around.

Plasma One - the stablecoin bank

We touched Plasma when we covered STBL; here’s why it deserves its own spotlight.

What it is: a neobank where your “checking account” is a stablecoin vault. You earn yield by default, spend with a card, and move money globally with near-zero friction.

Launch + setup: Backed by Peter Thiel’s fund, Plasma One went live in Sept 2025 with a $373M stablecoin reserve. The wedge is straightforward: 10%+ on stable balances, 4% card cashback, and zero-fee stablecoin transfers, packaged in a self-custodial app. Coverage targets 150+ countries out of the gate.

How it feels to use (a day in the app):

• Get paid in USDT/USDC → it lands in a yielding stable vault

• Pay in-store/online with the Visa card (virtual/physical) while your core balance keeps compounding.

• Send money home as stablecoin P2P (free) or off-ramp to local currency when needed.

• For freelancers/remote teams: invoice in dollars, settle in minutes, skip bank cut-offs and wire fees.

Why it’s different from “exchange + card” bundles:

• Stablecoin-first design: the stable vault is the account, not an add-on product.

• Emerging-market UX: assumes capital controls, shaky banks, and inflation, so speed, off-ramps, and low fees are defaults, not features.

• Self-custody optionality: you can hold keys yourself while still getting card rails and remittances that feel web2-simple.

Who this actually unlocks:

• Inflation-exposed users (LATAM, Africa, parts of Asia) who already treat USDT as savings.

• Remittance flows that want Internet-speed transfers without 6–8% fees.

• Creators/contractors billing in dollars but living in local currencies.

Plasma One sits right between EtherFi’s DeFi-native stack and Mantle UR’s compliant fiat bridge. It’s the “stablecoin bank” archetype, the version most likely to scale first in places where stables already are the dollar. If stablecoins are the new ACH, Plasma is the Chime/Revolut-like wrapper that turns that rail into daily habit.

What I’m watching:

• Net yield after card perks and spread (will 10%+ last, and where does it come from? What’s the actual return left after accounting for fees, FX spreads, rewards, and cost).

• Local off-ramp density (how many corridors are truly instant/low-fee?).

• Self-custody at scale (key recovery, fraud/chargeback tooling without re-centralizing).

Plasma One has a clear line of sight to becoming the everyday bank for the global stablecoin user.

Act V - The Big Picture

Quick pit stop on the “adapters” and the “viral onchain” play before we zoom out:

• Wirex / Revolut X (the adapters): the OG fintechs finally leaning in. Wirex now feels like a hybrid neobank (multi-fiat + 250+ tokens + card rewards). Revolut X plugs a pro-crypto trading layer straight into a 30M+ user base. Still TradFi-first UX, but the engine is clearly shifting to crypto.

• Tria (the onchain everyday bank): Arbitrum-native, gasless self-custody, real yield on stables, and tap-to-spend cards in 100+ countries.

So Neobank meta isn’t a one winner takes it all, it’s actually a stack:

• EtherFi → DeFi-native bank

• Mantle UR → compliant bridge

• Plasma One → stablecoin bank

• Tria → everyday onchain UX

• Wirex / Revolut X → fintechs adapting so they don’t get left behind.

Even card giants are adapting: Mastercard’s web3 card programs and Visa’s work on self-custody auto-payments tell you this is inevitable, wallets are becoming spending endpoints, not just storage.

And there is room for a lot of actors. 👈

Act VI — Friction & Reality Checks

• Regulation: Licenses, KYC/AML, and the Travel Rule aren’t optional; they’re the price of touching fiat. The winning apps hide this complexity so users feel “instant” without skipping compliance.

• Taxes: Spending crypto can be a taxable disposal and yield is typically income; if you don’t automate tracking and reporting, users churn. Good UX minimizes disposals (e.g., borrow vs sell) and exports clean reports.

• Stability: “Yield on cash” only works if reserves and risk are crystal clear; one wobble and trust evaporates. Transparent dashboards and conservative backing are non-negotiable.

• Fraud & disputes: Cards invite chargebacks and merchant risk; without tight controls and instant freezes, losses scale faster than users. Ops maturity matters as much as code.

• Self-custody comfort: People want control without fear; passkeys, recovery, and spending limits make sovereignty feel safe. Let users choose managed vs. self-custody without friction.

• Distribution: You don’t win on slogans, you win on rails. Real scale comes from reliable corridors (SEPA/SIC/ACH) and wallets (Apple/Google/Alipay) so “it just works” everywhere.

• Policy drift: Rules change by region and quarter; products need geo-toggles and conservative defaults. If you’re not built for regulation to move, you’ll be forced to stop.

Act VII — My Take

Neobanking is the obvious next turn of the flywheel. Stablecoins solved money-as-packets; now we’re packaging the whole bank. The crypto part fades into the background, and what’s left is speed, yield, and global reach that just… works.

If Revolut taught people a bank can live on your phone, this wave teaches them money doesn’t need a bank at all. Tap to pay, earn while idle, move value across borders in seconds, settle on weekends.

EtherFi shows the shape: spend from yield, not from a dead checking account. Mantle UR shows the bridge: real IBANs, real cards, real rails, without walling off on-chain. Together they make stablecoins feel like actual dollars.

Zooming out, I think the next 12–18 months look like this:

• the “crypto super app” stops being a meme and becomes a daily habit;

• compliance UX gets invisible (KYC feels like FaceID, tax export is a button);

• cards become on-ramps and off-ramps you don’t notice;

• self-custody stops being scary because recovery and limits feel native;

• yields compress a bit, but reliability wins, people will trade a few bps for trust.

Winners won’t be the loudest; they’ll be the ones that make moving money feel like sending a DM and make earning feel like default. That’s the unlock.

2/ X Alpha 🫡

1. Whale moves before headlines: If $WLFI really dumped 30% before Trump’s tariff news, that’s not just bad timing, that’s information flow in action. These kinds of front runs usually mean someone’s plugged into bigger narratives. Keeping an eye on $WLFI’s chart might say more about upcoming macro shifts than most CT takes.

2. $IN update: My post this week, $IN got listed on Upbit and ripped 2.5× before retracing on market chaos. The dip looks like opportunity to me. INFINIT has been one of the few AI × DeFi plays actually shipping: V2 live, Arbitrum integration, TOKEN2049 partnerships, all signal real traction. With Q4 catalysts and another campaign coming, this still feels early for a project that keeps delivering while others just tease roadmaps.

3. Meme: No comment 😂

4. Sorare → Solana: That’s a big move. Sorare shifting from StarkEx to Solana shows how far the chain’s brand has evolved, from “high-speed DeFi” to mainstream consumer infra. It’s a perfect match: global sports IP meets Solana’s speed and UX. If done right, this could bring millions of non-crypto users on-chain without them even noticing. For Solana, this is another proof point that it’s becoming the app chain for culture.

5. High FDV hangover: We’ve been saying it for months, TGE valuations got way ahead of themselves. The data proves it. The hype-priced tokens are bleeding because liquidity can’t keep up with supply. Projects like $SOLV or $BIO still have solid fundamentals, but pricing them like mid-caps on day one leaves zero room to grow. The next meta will reward teams that launch lean and let the market bid them up, not the other way around.

6. Alt season déjà vu: This post nails the cycle perfectly, every run, we watch the same story play out. Bitcoin grinds up, alt influencers call for “rotation,” and retail piles into coins with no floor. Then BTC dominance spikes, alts bleed, and everyone blames “toxic maxis.” The truth: BTC sets the tone, and alt pumps are just higher-beta plays on liquidity. If you treat them like investments, you’ll get wrecked; treat them like short-term trades, and you might actually survive the cycle.

7. Post-crash reality check: Crazy to realise how brutal this move was. Liquidations hit first, then we see the hidden damage: lenders, treasuries, market makers.

8. Touch-grass alpha: This one hits deep. The crash reminded everyone that wealth in crypto is paper until you hit withdraw. We forget how life-changing even $100K is in most countries while chasing another zero on the screen. $5M isn’t “exit poor,” it’s freedom, a roof, yield, and peace of mind. The real flex isn’t surviving 100x leverage, it’s cashing out, touching grass, and never needing to check charts again.

9. $TAO looks clean: Chart’s been holding strong through the chop. The fundamentals haven’t changed, real network, real compute, real demand, and if the AI narrative runs again, it’ll flow straight back here. Looks like one of those moments where narrative and setup might finally align.

10. Flow shift alpha: After the recent wipeout, capital will flow where it feels safe and useful. Traders are drained, so the next rotation will not be only memecoins or degen perps, it’s heading toward real utility: privacy, neobanks, BTC infra. The smart move now is positioning ahead of that shift, out of tired top-50 dinos and into CEX-listed apps with traction and future listings lined up.

That’s it for today frens!

Thank you for sticking around, your future self will thank you.
You can follow me on X @CryptoShiro_.

Find more Alpha on my Telegram & Instagram here: linktr.ee/cryptoshiro.

If you like to learn and share knowledge about crypto, feel free to share this post!

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Nothing here is financial advice; it is purely for informational purposes.

GM frens,

We’re closing the “bad” month (September is usually BTC’s worst), yet this one can still finish as one of the best Septembers ever if we close >+7%.

We are heading now into Q4 throughout Uptober, futures price ~81% odds of another 25 bps cut in October, seasonality plus easing is the exact combo that pipes liquidity back into risk.

Most of the time it’s not a good idea to sell before Q4:

This year is kinda weird tho: half the top-100 trades like a bull market, the other half like deep bear.

Fear crept back on the timeline, which is often rally fuel.

For BTC I’m watching: hold 112k to keep momentum; clear 118k to confirm the full reset. On catalysts, ETFs are back in the driver’s seat; a green light next in the queue would set tone for SOL/DOGE/XRP under the SEC’s shorter clocks.

That rotation is showing up where it should: new rails.

Perp-DEX season is live, Aster vs. Hyperliquid is the rivalry to watch (Aster’s momentum vs. Hyper’s depth and custom chain). Avantis on Base is catching a bid too, neatly fitting the Base-token funnel (I talked about it already on X and on my Telegram).

Stablecoin meta is in good health right now. XPL launch (we talk about it later) pushed the “who keeps the yield?” question into the mainstream.

STBL provides a simple answer to that: the user keeps the yield.
The winner is the stablecoin you can spend while the yield comes back to you.

So today I’m looking at $STBL, how the spend/yield split works, whether it can turn easing into real on-chain demand, and if the buyback + MFS flywheel can beat the unlocks.

Let’s dive 👇

Before we dive in this Week’s Newsletter

I curate CT Content on X.
Find new projects early. Don’t miss anything!

One of my latest post to learn quickly about STBL:

I’m posting daily Alpha on my Telegram Channel 👇

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This Week’s Newsletter dives deep into:

• Moon or Dust: $STBL - Will the Spend/Yield Split Stablecoin Own “Stablecoin 2.0”?

• X Alpha.

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1/ Moon or Dust: $STBL

It’s CEX season, it’s large backers and smart money season. And in this environment, we follow the big money.

We already talked about the stablecoin meta in a previous edition, and it’s heating right now with the launch of Plasma ($XPL), and of course the GENIUS Act headlines have also pushed institutions to revisit stablecoin design; the “who keeps the carry” debate is now mainstream, not just CT.

A few days ago I wrote a post on X about why yield-splitting stables are the logical next step after basic dollar tokens. And I first called $STBL in my Telegram channel on September 18 (Launch day) when it was trading around $0.17. Since then, it’s already done a 2.5×.

Price action: after the 2.5× impulse, $STBL has ranged ~8–12 days in a tight band, classic digestion. To me that looks like post-move absorption (weak hands out, stronger hands adding). That’s why this Moon or Dust is about $STBL.

The market meta since summer has been perp DEX + stablecoins + PM. We already covered perps (even if it’s probably going to be a future subject of this newsletter once again) and prediction market, today I’m diving into: stablecoins that give the carry back to users.

Founder and narrative-driven names ($ASTER, $AVNT, $XPL, $APEX) have been printing seven-figure wins for retail this month. That reflexive loop : wins → confidence → rotations → dips getting eaten, is alive and well.

And in that context, a design that upgrades the most used product in crypto, the stablecoin, deserves full attention.

So what’s so “2.0” about this new model of stablecoins?

Imagine this simply:

You mint $100 of a stablecoin “1.0” (USDT, USDC, etc.), so you “send” $100 to Tether, or Circle for example.

• They promise you can get it back anytime.

• While holding it, they put it in a safe government bond (called a Treasury bill, or “T-bill”) that earns interest.

👉 Normally, they keep all that interest for themselves. That’s how Tether, Circle, etc. make billions.
👉 You, the user, just get a digital dollar that never grows.

What STBL does differently with its stablecoin 2.0:

• It says: “Why not let the user keep that interest?”

• So it splits your $100 into two parts:

  1. The $100 digital dollar you can spend or send (like USDT/USDC).

  2. The interest money slowly piling up for you in the background.

You carry both.

Why it matters:

• Until now, stablecoin companies got rich from the interest.

• With STBL, you get paid instead.

• It’s like your bank suddenly saying: “Hey, we’ll give you all the savings interest, not us.”

Real-world use:

• A trader can keep dollars ready for trading while still earning interest.

• A DAO or company can pay salaries/spend dollars while their reserves keep growing.

🧭 What is STBL?

STBL is a stablecoin protocol from Tether co-founder Reeve Collins (he left in the early years, but the name still opens doors) and RWA operator Avtar Sehra that lets you mint a spendable dollar (USST) while keeping the T-bill yield (YLD) for yourself. The third piece, $STBL, governs the system and captures a share of activity through fee-funded buybacks and Multi-Factor Staking (MFS).

Think of your money as two streams living inside one asset: the principal you want to move around and the income it throws off. Most stables bundle both and send the income to the issuer. STBL splits them on purpose: the principal keeps moving as USST; the income keeps flowing to you as YLD.

Distribution note: Franklin Templeton is routing this via its Benji platform on BNB Chain, which matters for both retail reach and institutional comfort.

$STBL coordinates the rules, markets, and incentives that make this split composable across chains and apps.

This cycle showed how much value sits inside stablecoin treasuries. Users provided the float; issuers clipped the coupon. The recent $XPL run proved the market wants the opposite, “make my dollars work for me.” STBL answers that same desire as a protocol primitive any venue can adopt.

🧠 The problem it solves

DeFi keeps forcing a bad trade: liquidity vs income. If your dollars sit as stables, the issuer keeps the coupon. If you chase yield, you lose operational cash. The friction shows up everywhere: perp margin, DAO treasuries, payments, custody.

In 2023, Tether reportedly earned ~$13B from reserve yield, none of it flowed to stablecoin users. That’s the value being left on the table when issuers keep the coupon.

STBL removes the tradeoff if two things hold in production:
(1) USST markets are deep enough to exit without slippage on stress days, and
(2) YLD accrual is not gated by opaque partner rules.

Two concrete fits:

• Perp desks want margin that keeps earning to smooth PnL.

• DAOs/treasuries want cash they can spend today while coupon accrues.

Mental model: one backpack, two pockets: front pocket (USST) for spending; back pocket (YLD) quietly compounds.

Quick contrast with Ethena: ENA pays yield synthetically via perps funding; STBL’s yield is exogenous (T-bills/MMFs). One depends on market funding rates; the other on traditional coupons. Different risk profile, same end user promise: “my dollars should work while I use them.”

🏗️ How it works ?

You deposit tokenized T-bill collateral (Franklin Templeton’s Benji, Ondo USDY, BUIDL-style lines). The protocol mints USST 1:1 and issues a position-bound YLD NFT linked to that mint. You can spend or post USST wherever you want, perps, lenders, payments, while YLD keeps accruing the coupon to your address. To redeem the underlying, you return USST + YLD, and the position settles back to the RWA.

Three pieces, clean roles:

• USST — the spendable dollar, designed to compose across DeFi, payments, custody, even derivatives collateral if/when venues permit it.

• YLD — the income right, a per-position NFT that accrues the RWA coupon to the minter; it keeps paying even while USST is in motion.

• $STBL — governance & value capture: whitelists collateral, sets LTV/oracles/ops, directs treasury, and acts as the sink (buybacks, MFS).

What I like here are the design choices:

– Exogenous collateral: USST is backed by Treasuries/MMFs with a coupon you can actually observe. That’s the opposite of UST-style reflexive loops where the token backs itself. Here the peg points to Franklin or Ondo paper, not the price of $STBL.

– Explicit redemption: You mint USST, you get a YLD tied to that exact position, and you can only redeem the RWA with both. There’s no vague “yield bucket” where funds vanish, it’s always per-position, transparent.

– Two redemption rails: Institutions with KYC can go straight back to the underlying RWA. Retail? They’ll mostly exit through AMMs or RFQs. Think Curve pools or on-chain RFQ desks acting as the daily exit door, with Franklin Templeton as the ultimate backstop. That split matters, because under stress, secondary liquidity is what defends the peg in practice.

– Oracles + fees as circuit breakers. Peg defense isn’t just a tweet from the team, it’s in the parameters. Multi-feed oracles with deviation thresholds, plus dynamic mint/redeem fees that widen when things get volatile, that’s the toolkit. If they publish those settings clearly, integrators and venues can actually model risk.

Because of the split, desks can post USST as margin on perps and still collect YLD in parallel. That’s pure capital efficiency. USDC and USDT can’t do that. It’s a real edge if adoption clicks.

Narratives grab attention, but mechanics decide if a stable survives stress. STBL’s setup is the right kind of boring: clear flows, observable backing, explicit exits. That’s what gives it a shot to graduate beyond hype.

🪙 $STBL - the value capture token

Here’s where things get real. USST is the spendable dollar, YLD is the income right, but $STBL is where governance and value capture concentrate.

It’s not just a vote on proposals. $STBL holders decide what collateral gets onboarded, which RWA providers get flow, how fees are split, and where treasury firepower goes. That’s powerful, if USST gains traction, controlling the collateral whitelist is basically rent extraction over the whole pipeline.

And then comes the flywheel: every fee in the system, minting, ops, loops back into $STBL through buybacks and burns. Today the headline sink is the mint fee (~0.1%); ops fees may expand with integrations. MFS ties rewards to USST usage, so adoption → more lock, less float. Unlike USDT or USDC, where yield disappears into corporate coffers, here it feeds the token directly.

The numbers today:

• 10B total supply.

• ~825M in circulation (8.25%), the rest locked.

• Unlocks are monthly, with ~231M (2.3%) in Oct and Nov, then ~288M (2.8%) each month from December into 2026.

But most of these unlocks won’t be sold by the team.
The next STBL unlock will actually not enter circulation. It will be held in treasury, locked, and staked.

And in Q4, Buybacks start, Multi-Factor Staking (MFS) goes live, and the question becomes: can usage + sinks outrun issuance?

Look at the allocation:

• 20% staking → fuel for MFS.

• 20% team → big, but transparent cliffs will ease the fear.

• 15% treasury → for liquidity, partnerships, listings.

• 11% ecosystem, 10% MM, 5% advisors.

• The rest split between private sales and a small public distribution.

The unlock overhang is real, but there are levers to offset it. Multi-Factor Staking (MFS) makes rewards depend on USST usage, so the more adoption grows, the more tokens get locked instead of flooding the market.

Then there’s the buyback math, and it’s easy to follow:

• $100M of USST minted = $100k in buybacks

• $1B = $1M

• At $10B, you’re looking at $10M flowing back into $STBL

At small scale, that’s cosmetic. At big scale, it becomes a reflexive sink: more USST minted → more buybacks → tighter float → easier for price to re-rate.

And this is where the “LUNA but with T-bills” analogy makes sense. Terra relied on its own token as backing, endogenous and reflexive. STBL’s yield is exogenous (Treasuries/MMFs), and redemption is explicit (you need USST + YLD to pull collateral). The peg does not rely on $STBL’s price.

But as USST grows, fee flow and MFS lockups compound into $STBL, so holders capture upside without carrying peg risk. If they execute, $STBL behaves like the equity-like layer on a stablecoin protocol that actually pays users. If they don’t, the vesting curve will do what vesting curves do. That’s the trade you’re making.

👥 Team & partners

• Reeve Collins: co-founded Tether and served as its first CEO. He left early, but the name still opens doors. Venues and institutions will pick up the phone when Collins calls, and in this game, that’s half the battle.

• Avtar Sehra: the real operator. Ex-BlackRock, Hamilton Lane, now running KAIO. He’s been in the trenches of tokenization and RWA structuring long before crypto started calling T-bills “DeFi yield.” That’s exactly the profile you want if you’re pitching regulators or asset managers. Collins brings the credibility, Sehra brings the execution.

• Franklin Templeton: $1.6T AUM, already minted $100M USST. That’s not just supply, it’s a stamp of approval from one of the biggest names in finance. If Franklin is comfortable routing regulated T-bill rails through this system, others will follow.

• BlackRock/BUIDL & Ondo USDY : the coupon engines. BlackRock needs no intro, and Ondo has become the RWA darling in DeFi treasuries. Together, they anchor USST with assets risk teams already recognize.

• Chain distribution: BNB + broad EVM coverage. BNB isn’t a random choice. EVM coverage gives the integrations path for institutions. One foot in retail, one in Wall Street.

If you want to dive deeper on the team 👈

⚡ Q4 & near-term catalysts

• Buybacks & burns: all mint fees loop back into $STBL. With TX links public, this turns narrative into receipts. $100M USST minted = ~$100k buybacks; at $1B, it’s $1M. Reflexivity scales fast.

• Multi-Factor Staking (MFS): more than staking, it’s the unlock pressure valve. The higher the USST usage, the more float gets locked instead of hitting the market.

• $USST issuance & pair depth: this is the scoreboard. Deeper books on majors and venues treating USST as operational cash or perp collateral will show if it’s moving beyond theory.

• Payments rails + new integrations: teased already, and with BNB/EVM coverage the expansion path is real. If payments firms bite, the “stablecoin 2.0” pitch goes mainstream.

• Derivatives collateral tailwind: the CFTC’s tokenized-collateral push puts stables like USST in the conversation for margin, exactly where “spendable but still yielding” makes sense.

• Monthly treasury cards: addresses, balances, disbursements. Few teams do this. If STBL does, it’s how you turn hype into a franchise

📈 Why it could moon?

• Meta fit: perps want margin that keeps earning, treasuries want cash that keeps earning: USST + YLD matches both without UX gymnastics.

• Protocol-native split: cleaner than app-level hacks; any venue can integrate and keep the promise intact.

• RWA credibility: Franklin/Benji, BlackRock-style lines, and Ondo rails reduce integration friction with risk teams.

• Reflexive sinks: fee-funded buybacks + MFS locks convert growth into persistent demand for $STBL as USST scales.

• BNB/EVM distribution: routes and wallets where users already are — the same force that supercharged XPL.

• “LUNA but with T-bills”: the flywheel power without the endogenous reserve flaw; exogenous coupon, explicit redemption.

• Simple story that sells itself: your stablecoin pays you while staying usable. That’s cross-audience, from retail to treasurers.

🌀 Why it could go sideways?

• Throughput and redemptions need to feel instant on stress days; any lag slows venue adoption.

• Vesting curve is active; MFS participation and fee sinks must outrun fresh float or price discovery gets heavy.

• Sinks bite at scale; the buyback flywheel looks great at nine-digit USST, feels lighter early on.

• RWA counterparties add off-chain windows and operational risk; diversification and disclosures matter.

• Shelf competition: USDC/USDT incumbency, Ethena’s synthetic yield, Plasma’s retail grip, winning payments partners is a grind, not a headline.

• Mechanics literacy: YLD is a new muscle; if users ignore or mishandle the income leg, the split stays niche.

• BNB alignment: fantastic tail-wind when aligned; venue politics are always a factor to watch.

🌕 Verdict - Moon or Dust?

Stablecoins already won crypto; the next fight is who keeps the carry. STBL hard-codes the answer: the dollar (USST) stays usable, the coupon (YLD) stays yours, and $STBL clips activity and steers policy.

It taps the same instinct that powered XPL recently (Stable is coming also), “make my dollars work for me”, but does it at the protocol layer any venue can plug into.

XPL sits at a multi-billion valuation; STBL is still low-hundreds-of-millions. Same user promise (yield back to users), different surface area (XPL = chain + consumer rails; STBL = mint/yield split any app can adopt).

If $STBL simply prices at 5–10% of XPL as the “protocol equivalent,” that’s a ~3–6× re-rate; closing the narrative gap with integrations puts the 10× case on the table. And remember, XPL = chain + consumer app, while STBL = protocol primitive other chains/apps can adopt. If that distribution lands, the re-rate tends to surprise to the upside.

Q4 is a scoreboard quarter. I want to see:

• buybacks with on-chain TX links,

• MFS participation soaking float on unlock days,

• steady USST growth + deeper books on majors,

• monthly treasury cards (addresses, balances, disbursements),

• published oracle/circuit-breaker/peg-defense parameters.

Hit those, and the flywheel forms: more USST → bigger fee sink + more staking → tighter float → easier listings → more USST. Miss them, and the vesting curve will do what vesting curves do.

Verdict: moon-tilted, execution-sensitive. If receipts land, $STBL graduates from clever design to true category contender.

Franklin Templeton doesn’t commit $100m to experiments and even aixbt points to the same thing

Wintermute has 6M$ STBL 👈

Full thesis 👈

VisaUSD? 👈

NFA / DYOR.

2/ X Alpha

1. TGE saturation: Great post. launches are stacking $100M+ FDV week after week, but attention and liquidity don’t scale with it. Good projects risk getting lost in the churn, timing matters as much as fundamentals.

2. Know your lane: this post nails it, most of us made money in one or two ways (narratives, farming, macro plays) but spend time LARPing in areas we don’t really dominate. In a bull where opportunities fly by, misidentifying your real edge = leaving serious money on the table.

3. Airdrop season is back: this one’s a solid guide to navigate it, good to filter the noise and spot where the real early opportunities sit.

4. Pump Revenues: holding up this strong is hard to ignore, $118M in 2 months puts it right next to perps and stables as a real PMF. People can debate sustainability, but the math shows it’s undervalued if usage keeps up, and upside looks big if memecoins catch another bid.

5. Plasma × Aave: $1.5B daily inflows is wild, it shows both how strong Plasma’s launch momentum is and how massive Aave still is when it comes to attracting liquidity.

6. $APEX Buyback: Perp DEX meta keeps getting stronger and $APEX is riding it hard. Even after the pump, a $12M revenue-funded buyback puts real weight behind the token, showing both product traction and team commitment. In a space where buybacks = confidence, this could be one of the next big perp plays if they keep scaling volumes.

7. Hypurr = Hyper’s culture lock-in: Not gonna rehash the drop but here’s the alpha: Hypurr gives Hyperliquid a brand-native NFT primitive (IP controlled, founder-made, team repped) that apps can plug into for access, boosts, allowlists, fee perks. That’s how you turn NFTs into retention + liquidity for HyperEVM and add another sink for HYPE demand. Hypurr could becomes the membership badge every serious Hyper user wants, floor follows utility.

8. $773M in unlocks coming this week: Biggest thing to watch isn’t the size but how the market digests it. If tokens hold steady after supply hits, that’s strength. If they bleed straight after, avoid. Simple as that.

9. Perp DEX race heating up: Aster putting up $42B in a day is wild, but volume doesn’t always equal sticky users. Hyperliquid still has the strongest mindshare and community, which is harder to replace than numbers. Worth watching if Aster can turn this burst into real staying power or if it’s just a one-off wash.

10. Spot wisdom: Being comfy in spot isn’t just safer, it’s what lets you actually survive long enough to catch the big moves. Perps eat you alive with funding and stress, spot gives you time, which is usually the real edge in crypto.

That’s it for today frens!

Thank you for sticking around, your future self will thank you.
You can follow me on X @CryptoShiro_.

Find more Alpha on my Telegram & Instagram here: linktr.ee/cryptoshiro.

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Nothing here is financial advice; it is purely for informational purposes.

GM frens,

That was a busy week for crypto, and it feels good.

Macro first: the Fed cut rates by 25 bps to 4.00%–4.25% and futures still lean toward another cut by late October.
Stocks pushed fresh ATHs on the S&P 500, Nasdaq stayed firm, gold’s pinned near records. That’s liquidity coming back into risk, and crypto’s catching it through the ETF pipe. BTC cleared the prior range and is holding above resistance; ETH snapped back after that harsh rejection and looks steady. Under the hood, Total3 broke out, and rotation is showing up where it should.

Flows back this up. Bitcoin ETFs printed solid net buys, and ETH ETFs, while choppier, improved on strength. It’s not euphoria, but it’s persistent. The big limiter is still structure: the SEC punted staking-ETF decisions to Oct/Nov, so ETH products don’t pay staking yet, less attractive for long-only allocators. Zooming out, the read from the banks is the same: institutional adoption is early, participation on pro venues is rising, and stablecoins are sliding into TradFi rails. Plenty of dry powder still on the sidelines.

Now the fun part. DeFi fired a real shot with $ASTER on BNB Chain, MEV-resistant one-click perps, CEX-style books, hidden orders, even stock perps, backed by YZi Labs and openly cheered by CZ.

Aster came in hot. The token went vertical on day one, and still is at the time this newsletter is going out. Is it flawless? Far from it, FDV is heavy and emissions are a real risk. But the mechanics matter: this is the kind of “new rails” product that can actually pull order flow away from the leaders. I flagged it around $0.45 in my Telegram, and it’s already done a clean 4× since. If you didn’t have eyes on it, you probably felt it in your PnL.

Quick read on $ASTER vs $HYPE: Aster’s got momentum, CZ megaphone, BNB funnel, hidden orders, cross-chain, and an airdrop that spiked volumes. Hyperliquid still holds the crown, custom chain, deepest books, scary fast, and insanely profitable with a tiny team. Rivalry just started; if Aster turns hype into sticky OI/fees without emissions drag, we’ve got a real fight.

Aster is just one of the obvious size trades this month, $PUMP, $CARDS, $AVNT, $STBL back-to-back. I talked about all of them on my telegram channel, but also on this newsletter. If you clipped none of them, be honest about why. A lot of CT is still stuck in the 2024 trenching meta (micro caps, PvP, five-minute coins). That can build a roll, sure, but the edge is shrinking: serial deployers and multi-walleters are farming that game. Maybe you should be hunting venue-level and infra-level moves where the upside scales with flow, not just with luck.

Meanwhile, the “airdrop season” drumbeat is getting louder because suddenly everyone is exploring (or outright confirming) a token:

• Base - At Base Camp, Coinbase’s L2 openly acknowledged it’s preparing a native token: decentralize sequencing/governance over time and recycle economics back to builders/users. Without a token, activity leaks; with one, Base can lock in Coinbase’s funnel.

• MetaMask / $MASK - ConsenSys’ Joe Lubin confirmed the long-teased token is “coming very soon,” tied to governance/decentralization and likely announced inside the wallet to avoid scams. They’ve already launched an in-house stablecoin (mUSD), so the in-wallet economics are lining up. With 30M+ MAUs, even a conservative drop would be huge.

• Rabby - The challenger basically said the quiet part out loud: they polled X on what market cap their token should be at. Better UX + strong incentives is their wedge against MetaMask’s aging lead.

• OpenSea & Abstract - Both keep circling tokens. For OpenSea, it’s a response to incentive-heavy rivals; for Abstract, tokens are coordination fuel (security, grants, governance).

Put that together and you see why Q4 could be violent to the upside: more cuts = more liquidity, ETFs keep the funnel open, DeFi is shipping new rails, and the largest consumer-facing airdrops of the cycle may stack into the same quarter.

As liquidity comes back and everyone chases the obvious lanes (ETFs, perps, airdrops), I’m also watching where fresh capital can turn into real usage, not just price. The clearest sleeper, in my view, is the machine economy: robots and autonomous agents that can identify themselves on-chain, pay and get paid in stablecoins, log verifiable work, and coordinate without a middleman. Cheap sensors + edge AI + global rails (stablecoins/L2s) + proofs (of location, of work) = a new “economic client” entering crypto.

That’s why I’ve been flagging this narrative, and a few tickers inside it, both here and on my Telegram lately. It lines up with everything we just covered: macro liquidity, infra shipping, and users flowing to products that actually do something. When machines become users, you don’t just get speculation; you get repeat, programmatic demand.

So today’s deep dive is Robotics × Crypto: the coordination stacks, mapping/data markets, payment/settlement rails, proof systems, low-latency chains, and the projects I think can capture that flow.

Let’s get into it 👇

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• Deep Dive - Robotics × Crypto - From Myth to Machine Wallets

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1/ 🤖 Deep Dive: Robotics × Crypto - From Myth to Machine Wallets

Humans pictured mechanical helpers long before they had the engineering to build them:

1. In Greek mythology, Talos was a giant bronze guardian patrolling Crete’s shores.

2. In ancient China, stories told of crafted beings that reflected their makers.

3. The very word “robot” only arrived in 1920, from Karel Čapek’s play R.U.R., which imagined robots as a new labor class.

4. Later, Isaac Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics took the idea further, framing the ethical rules of how intelligent machines should behave.

Then the fantasy started turning real. In 1961, Unimate became the first industrial robot, moving molten metal at General Motors and revolutionizing factory work. By the 1970s, Japan was building early humanoids like Waseda University’s Wabot-1. By the 2000s, Honda’s ASIMO could climb stairs and wave at crowds — a glimpse that robots might one day become everyday companions.

The real shift happened when robotics merged with AI. Suddenly, robots weren’t just repeating pre-programmed motions. With computer vision, motion planning, and now large language models, they can interpret human instructions, perceive their surroundings, and connect actions together.

Instead of being a rigid playlist of movements, a robot becomes an adaptive system that learns and reacts :

• Industrial robots: programmable arms that weld, assemble, paint. This is the “lights-out” endgame, think China’s dark factories, Xiaomi’s Changping line pushing out phones every few seconds, no humans on the floor.

• Service robots: the ones you already see, hospital carts moving meds, airport cleaners, hotel runners for room service, AMRs/AGVs threading warehouses, drones doing inventory checks and short-hop deliveries.

Despite the buzz, most robots today are fit-for-purpose. Predictable jobs win on ROI; the messy world resists generality.

Even the humanoid wave (Optimus, Figure, Agility, Boston Dynamics) faces a steep climb: balance, dexterity, sensory fusion, data scarcity, the “march of nines” for reliability, and cost curves where academic arms can still touch $70k. The software gap remains for fully general autonomy.

The race is global. China leads installs, policy-driven scale; South Korea tops density; Germany anchors Europe’s hardware base; Japan remains a manufacturing titan; the US dominates AI/software and aims to codify a national robotics strategy. Jobs will shift: repetitive roles phase out, while robot techs, machine-vision ops, and automation supervisors rise.

The human edge, empathy, care, creativity, still anchors essential work.

And this is exactly where crypto enters : If robots are to work, learn, and trade in the physical world, they need the same primitives we’ve been tracking all year in this newsletter: identity, payments, verifiable logs, and neutral coordination.

We’ve been building toward this moment across past editions:

• April 13, 2025 — DePAI via peaq: We explained how DePAI extends DePIN by adding an intelligence layer: devices and machines gaining wallets, identity, and the ability to earn. We framed peaq as the backbone of this machine economy. Price check: $PEAQ was ~$0.1149 then, dipped to ~$0.066 over summer, and trades near ~$0.101 today — resilient given its real-world integrations with Bosch and others….

• June 18, 2025 — Robotics Case Study: Before most even paid attention to robotics, we flagged the coordination problem: robots locked in closed firmware, unable to communicate or collaborate. We highlighted how crypto could provide the middleware, registries, execution layers, and incentives, for machine coordination. Unfortunately the project showcased was just a money grab for private investors, but the concept was good. Today the robotics narrative is heating up, with new categories of tokens forming around exactly these ideas.

• August 14, 2025 — CodecFlow: We zoomed into execution: how agents use TEEs and on-chain proofs to act with verifiable trust. Back then $CODEC was ~$0.0277; today it’s near ~$0.039 (+40%) and even printed a new ATH.

  I already shared on my channel and on X, that I was buying close to the $16–17M market cap lows, a reflection of my conviction in both CodecFlow and the Robotics narrative.

• As I wrote then, this chart has one of the cleanest uptrends in the market, dips are for accumulating, and the broader category is still tiny: fewer than a dozen serious projects, still under $1B combined.

Those newsletters laid the rails: identity, coordination, execution.

CoinGecko only just recognized “Robotics” as a category, which tells you how early we remain. The entire crypto robotics sector is worth ~$449M, barely 1% of DeAI and literally a rounding error compared to traditional robotics (projected to hit $370B by 2034 and a $5T humanoid market by 2050).

With real-world humanoid raises like Figure’s $1B at $39B valuation, investor FOMO is trickling into crypto. This is the only liquid and accessible way for most people to gain exposure to robotics.

This is why even short-term tops don’t matter. The trajectory is mid- to long-term, and it feels like the pre-vertical phase of the agent narrative before Virtuals exploded.

Today we dive into the next layer: the robotics stack itself. From operating systems for humanoids, to spatial mapping protocols, to real-world machine economies, this is where the abstract meets the physical.

Why Crypto Rails Matter for Robotics ?

Robots are moving from closed labs into open environments. To operate at scale, they need the same primitives we’ve tracked across DeAI and DePIN:

• Prove identity & reputation → cryptographic IDs, attestations of hardware, location, and policy compliance.

• Settle & incentivize work (M2M) → machine-to-machine settlements for tasks, power, bandwidth, maps, teleop, and insurance, with streaming rewards for uptime and service quality.

• Prove work on-chain → on-chain proofs that log what was done, when, and by whom, closing the loop for SLAs, audits, and warranties.

• Coordinate neutrally across vendors → open protocols that let mixed fleets cooperate instead of being locked into siloed vendor stacks.

This is the bridge between digital agents and embodied agents, moving from simulations and chatbots into machines that act in the physical world. The real question isn’t if crypto underpins this stack, but which categories capture the value.

Rather than dissecting every token like I did with $CODEC a few weeks back, I’ll map the core lanes of the robotics narrative and point to the projects that matter most right now. Links included so you can DYOR 👇

A) 🧠 Robot OS & Coordination

At the base of the robotics stack sits the operating system: the shared runtime that turns raw perception into planning and actuation. It’s also where identity, synchronization, and multi-robot tasking get resolved. Think of it as the middleware layer that lets heterogeneous fleets talk to each other and work in sync, rather than being trapped in closed firmware silos.

Robots need a common OS to verify who they are, share spatial context, and collaborate. That’s the missing connective tissue this lane is trying to build.

• OpenMind (OM1 + Fabric): Positioned as a hardware-agnostic OS and coordination layer for humanoids, drones, and service bots. Think of it as a “Rosetta Stone” for robots: a common language that binds identity, telemetry, and coordination into one protocol. Fabric adds scheduling across fleets, who does what, when, and how tasks get logged on-chain. The fact that it’s drawing institutional attention suggests the market finally sees coordination as a standalone category.

• Robonomics (XRT): A veteran project from the Ethereum/Polkadot days. It pioneered the concept of robots ↔ smart contracts middleware, drones, smart homes, IoT sensors all tying into blockchain logic. It’s small (low single-digit millions in float), which makes it reflexive: when liquidity rotates into robotics, XRT is a pure high-beta play on middleware. It doesn’t need to win standards outright to move, it just needs volume in the narrative.

• peaq (PEAQ): The flagship project of this narrative, already covered extensively in the DePAI edition. peaq adds the identity + wallet + earning primitives on top of coordination, the glue that allows robots to transact, hold value, and be treated as economic agents. In practice: once a coordination OS assigns a task, peaq ensures the machine can invoice, earn, and settle payments.

Coordination is where robotics flips from engineering to economics. The moment fleets from different vendors can share maps, sync tasks, and verify payments, you’re not just running robots, you’re creating marketplaces.

These 3 projects together, form the substrate where coordination itself becomes a business model, and that’s where the real upside sits.

B) 🛰️ Spatial Positioning & Shared World-Models

Robots don’t need to imitate humans; they need their own senses, precise location, a shared understanding of space, and a way to exchange that information securely. This layer is the prerequisite for cooperative autonomy: centimeter-grade localization, shared maps, and encrypted spatial graphs that multiple machines can tap in real time.

• Auki ($AUKI): Auki is one of the few teams tackling robotics from the hardest angle: spatial awareness. If robots are to navigate crowded warehouses, guide people through airports, or collaborate in real time, they need a shared sense of space. That’s the problem Auki has been building for since 2021. Its core product, Posemesh, is a decentralized spatial web. Instead of sending camera feeds to a central server, devices exchange spatial data peer-to-peer, encrypted, private, and composable. The result is a live, shared map of the world that robots, AR glasses, and IoT systems can act on together.

  Think of it as the DePIN layer for place and context: the prerequisite for any cooperative autonomy. Auki has already demonstrated live deployments, like humanoids at conferences receiving Posemesh data and guiding visitors through dynamic halls. That’s not a simulation, it’s the real thing. With a market cap in the $70–77M range, $AUKI sits in mid-cap territory: small enough for reflexive upside, large enough to show traction. If adoption compounds, it’s positioned as a base-layer primitive for the robotics narrative.

• GEODNET: If Auki provides the shared map, GEODNET provides the coordinates. Its decentralized network of GNSS reference stations (“satellite miners”) streams real-time kinematic (RTK) corrections that shrink GPS error from meters down to centimeters. That precision is what lets drones avoid collisions, AMRs steer through warehouses, and tractors plant rows to the inch. Traditionally, this data is locked up by incumbents like Trimble; GEODNET uses crypto incentives to make it open, global, and continuously expanding, critical plumbing when “close enough” means failure.

Spatial is the choke-point that unlocks robotics utility, yet it’s barely priced relative to agents. If agents had LLMs as their unlock, robots have spatial models, and whoever owns the maps + proofs owns the movement (and the payments that ride on it).

What to watch:

• Coverage & speed: These networks need dense deployments across warehouses, campuses, and cities, plus near-instant positioning updates. Reliability at the centimeter level is what makes robots trustworthy in the field.

• Integration with OS stacks: The real unlock comes when robot operating systems tap into Posemesh or RTK feeds by default. Once fleets are trained on your map, switching costs disappear.

• Billing tied to proof: If a robot can prove “I navigated here, I delivered this,” then spatial data becomes a billable service. That’s how infrastructure turns into revenue.

Spatial infrastructure is the Google Maps moment for robotics. $AUKI gives you the liquid, privacy-first bet on shared world models, while GEODNET is the quiet GNSS backbone enabling precision at scale. With crypto robotics still worth only ~$450M versus the hundreds of billions in traditional robotics, this corner of the stack looks deeply underpriced relative to its impact.

C) ⚙️ Execution Layers & Agent Control

The models need to leave the lab. Execution layers are the bridge between AI policy (what an agent decides) and real-world actuation (what a robot does). This is where safety, verifiability, and control move from whitepapers into physical reality.

• CodecFlow (CODEC): We’ve already gone deep here in past editions : TEEs, on-chain proofs, and a clean execution pipeline that makes “trust, but verify” real for embodied AI.

• NRN Agents (Neuron): Positioned closer to the model-training side, NRN builds pipelines where agents practice in simulation and gamified environments before moving to real robots. The edge is compressing the sim-to-real loop, fast, cheap learning at scale that turns into usable autonomy.

• PrismaX: Geared toward deployment, PrismaX provides teleoperation and human-in-the-loop safety. Operators can step in during edge cases, with their interventions logged and recycled as training data. It’s the safeguard that makes real-world rollouts viable while improving models over time.

What to watch:

• Policy handoffs: How well AI agents can pass decisions to real robots without glitches or dangerous mistakes. Smooth handoffs = trust.

• Safety nets: Systems where humans can step in if needed, and where every intervention is logged with proof. This keeps operations auditable and accountable.

• Action marketplaces: Imagine robots being paid per completed task, with each action tracked and verified on-chain. This turns “control software” into a revenue stream.

If coordination is the “language” and spatial maps are the “navigation,” execution is the “muscle memory.” It’s the part where ideas become actions. Projects that can show safe, verifiable control loops will stand out.

D) ⚡ Real-World Robotics Networks & Co-Chains

Robots aren’t just devices; they’re fleets. And fleets need networks that can handle constant data exchange, task assignments, and payments in real time. A humanoid or drone doesn’t wait 10–15 seconds for a block to finalize, it needs sub-second guarantees. That’s why general-purpose L1s/L2s struggle here: they were built for finance and trading, not for machines navigating warehouses or skies.

This is where robotics-native chains come in. They’re designed for low-latency coordination, edge bandwidth, and fleet-level control. They don’t just settle transactions; they orchestrate actions, meter device usage, and anchor proofs of what robots actually did. In other words, these chains are turning “robot ops” into an on-chain business layer.

• peaq: The “machine economy” L1; handling payments, identity, and wallets so that robots can transact as independent agents.

• eMDR (Modulr Cloud): A newer player with serious pedigree: ex-Amazon Robotics engineers and ex-NASA PhDs building co-chains for robotics workloads. Think of it as a decentralized AWS for robots, fleet control, data pipelines, and training environments all rolled into one stack. Live pilots already involve drones and mobile robots operated via cloud commands. What differentiates eMDR is its focus on deterministic latency and ROS/ROS2-ready SDKs, aiming to make on-chain fleet orchestration viable in production, not just in simulation. I talked about this token in my telegram channel and this sudden drop could either be the kind of entry point that pays if the pilots mature into full deployments, or the market signaling execution risk. In other words, EMDR sits exactly in that Moon or Dust territory: ambitious fundamentals, reflexive tokenomics, but still unproven at scale.

• Swarm Subnet (TAO): A Bittensor subnet focused on drone autonomy and swarming logic. Incentives are designed for agents to share policies, lowering the cost of training coordinated behaviors that would be prohibitive for single teams.

What to watch:

• Latency guarantees: Robots can’t wait on block times. Sub-second finality is the bar for drones, humanoids, or warehouse fleets to operate safely in live environments.

• ROS integrations: Most robots today run on ROS/ROS2 middleware. Native SDKs and plug-ins that let engineers connect fleets without re-architecting their stack will decide adoption speed.

• Device allowances: Each robot needs a way to authenticate, get permissions, and consume bandwidth or compute on demand. Think of it as “wallets for machines,” but tuned to physical operations.

• Token sinks: Beyond pilots, the real test is whether usage translates into recurring demand for the native token. Payment rails, bandwidth fees, and task receipts all need to burn or lock supply for value to accrue.

If coordination is the “language” and spatial maps are the “navigation,” execution is the “muscle memory.” Real-world robotics networks and co-chains are the “nervous system”, carrying the signals, syncing the reflexes, and making sure every part of the body of machines moves together.

It’s one thing to map the world or design a coordination protocol; it’s another to run fleets of drones or humanoids through on-chain infrastructure with predictable latency and billing. Whoever nails latency + integration + economic sinks will be the settlement layer of the machine economy.

E) 🧪 Simulation, Integration & Verification

Every robot has to train before it touches the real world. Simulation is how you compress risk: thousands of virtual hours logged for every physical one. Integration is how raw sensor firehoses get turned into meaningful context. Verification is how you prove the work actually happened and can be billed. This lane ties all three together.

• RoboStack: Positioned as the “SimCity” of robotics. It combines large-scale cloud simulators with the Robot Context Protocol (RCP), which digests raw sensor streams into clean semantic channels.Instead of drowning in LiDAR points (the millions of distance measurements lasers generate to map a room in 3D) and endless camera frames, downstream apps receive structured signals: “object detected,” “room mapped,” “task complete.” That abstraction is what makes higher-level autonomy and billing possible.

• IoTeX & Helium: These aren’t robotics-first projects but they serve as critical tie-ins. IoTeX specializes in device attestations, cryptographic receipts that prove “this machine, in this place, did this thing.” Helium provides decentralized connectivity, anchoring proof-of-coverage and bandwidth supply for fleets.

  We already covered Helium in detail in a Case Study of this newsletter, where we explained how its Proof-of-Coverage model and hotspot network reshaped IoT connectivity. Bringing that back to robotics: the same primitives apply. Robots need to prove they were online, connected, and present when completing a task. IoTeX and Helium extend the robotics stack beyond just “brains” and “maps”, they provide the connective tissue that makes verifiable, billable autonomy possible.

What to watch:

• Simulation→ Deployment parity: how close virtual training environments are to real-world conditions, and whether models transfer without failure.

• On-chain attestations: attaching proofs of work-done directly to invoices (“Robot A mapped X sqm, Drone B delivered Y parcels”).

• Audit trails: structured logs that enterprises can feed to insurers, regulators, or compliance systems to make robotics deployment insurable at scale.

If coordination is the language, maps are the navigation, execution is the muscle memory, Real-world robotics networks and co-chains the nervous system then simulation and verification are the immune system. They catch errors before they spread, ensure trust in what robots report, and make the difference between “cool demo” and “deployable asset class.” This category will decide which projects move from theory to adoption, because enterprises won’t onboard fleets without proofs they can trust.

F) 💸 Financing & Exposure Vehicles

Robotics isn’t cheap. Hardware, sensors, safety testing, and scaling fleets into the real world are capital-intensive. TradFi covers this with billion-dollar equity raises (Figure, Agility, Apptronik), but retail investors rarely get access.

This is where crypto-native financing primitives open new doors.

Capital Formation:

• XMAQUINA → DAO treasury that allocates into private robotics and embodied-AI ventures (think humanoids like Figure or service-robot startups). It tokenizes exposure to equity rounds that would normally be off-limits to retail. The key variables are NAV transparency and whether equity exits flow back to tokenholders in practice.

• CDAO-style models → Broader experiments in tokenized pre-IPO equity. While not robotics-only, this lane could eventually include robotics startups, letting crypto users access deals earlier than public markets.

Operational Revenue Pipes:

• Akash (AKT) → Decentralized compute marketplace where fleets can rent GPU/CPU cycles for training, inference, or simulations. If robots are constantly “paying per cycle,” Akash becomes the utility meter for autonomy.

• Ocean Protocol (OCEAN) → Data marketplace for robotic perception. Fleets generate enormous sensory streams (LiDAR, video, telemetry). Ocean allows this data to be packaged, sold, and reused, flipping costs into revenue.

What to watch:

• NAV reporting → Do projects like XMAQUINA publish clear, audited numbers on what their treasury is worth?

• Liquidity discipline → Does the token’s market value reflect the assets it holds, or does it drift away on pure hype?

• Exit mechanics → When a robotics startup backed by the DAO sells or IPOs, how does that value flow back to tokenholders?

• Revenue sharing → For RWA protocols (Akash, Ocean), are fleets actually paying and earning through them, turning these into real cash-flow engines instead of just “markets on paper”?.

If coordination is the “language,” maps the “navigation,” execution the “muscle memory,”networks the “nervous system,” simulation and verification the “immune system” then financing is the circulatory system pumping liquidity into an otherwise closed loop. Without it, the robotics stack stalls before it scales. With it, crypto turns robotics from a black-box equity bet into an open, liquid, and global trade.

Conclusion

Across this deep dive, we’ve mapped the full body of the robotics stack:

• Coordination as the brain.

• Spatial maps as navigation.

• Execution as muscle memory.

• Networks as the nervous system.

• Simulation as the immune system.

• Financing as the circulatory system.

Each layer tells part of the story, but the real meta emerges when they connect.

Robotics is physical autonomy; crypto is financial autonomy. Fuse them, and you get autonomous economic agents that perceive, plan, act, and settle their own bills.

The filters stay the same:

1. Tokens must be consumed directly by machines.

2. Demand has to come from paying enterprises, not wash loops.

3. Adoption should be verifiable in device counts, pilots, and SLAs.

4. Value has to flow back to tokenholders, otherwise it’s emissions theater.

The call hasn’t changed since April and August: infrastructure captures coordination rents, and when liquidity rotates in, the 2–3 leaders in each lane take the lion’s share.

The scoreboard is usage: robots consuming credits, attestations hitting chains, invoices clearing on autopilot. That’s when this narrative shifts from speculation to settlement.

More of the Robotics Crypto landscape 👈

Robotics Tokens Overview (Sept 17, 2025) 👈

More of Codec Opium 👈

If you want to dive even deeper into Robotics 👈

Robotics Narrative is heating up 👈

Robotics x Crypto Crossover 👈

That’s a lot of projects. And of course not every project will deliver on price. But backing the Robotics Narrative as a whole puts you early in a sector that’s only going to expand.

The robotics narrative is no longer just a future bet, it’s here.
You can’t afford to fade it.

2/ X Alpha 🫡

1. STBL - radar on: Mentioned it on my Telegram, this has the classic combo (serious backers + stablecoin angle + CEX rails) that can re-rate fast if adoption shows up. If we see real usage (payments/treasury integrations, onchain liquidity growth) this can be the next “must-own” in the stablecoin meta.

2. Eigen’s glow-up: Google picking EigenLayer for AI agent payments lands right after the Eigenlayer → EigenCloud rebrand, clean timing that upgrades them from “restaking niche” to trust layer for machine payments. My read: this pushes Eigen from infra that secures apps to infra that settles value for AI, bigger fee surface, stronger network effects.

3. Base airdrop scenarios: not going to repeat the full breakdown. Worst case? Regulators ruin the party, but that’s the lowest-probability outcome. Either way, an airdrop here would be one of the most asymmetric plays in the L2 space.

4. Prediction × TAO flywheel: we’ve already covered both PMs and Bittensor in past editions, now they’re finally touching. If TAO subnets become oracles of crowd truth (sports + macro) and pipe that signal into models, you get data moat → agent demand → TAO staking/fee pull.

5. Aave V4, worth your time: Clean breakdown, V4’s hub-and-spoke + risk-priced borrowing isn’t just a facelift; it’s the path to “DeFi banks” that price credit like TradFi, unify liquidity across chains, and plug RWAs in safely.

6. Airdrops are dumb?: This is a good post because we’re clearly entering airdrop season again. The timing matters: teams are lining up big distributions, and the way they’re designed will shape who sticks around after TGE. Thinking beyond “free money” toward smarter, holder-focused models is exactly the type of alpha founders and users need right now.

7. Crypto Narrative Tier List for Q4: Clean narrative tier list, useful because it maps where real flows and product-market fit are converging (stable fee pipes, tokenized cashflows) vs. where engagement is just noise. Helps decide what to farm, what to hold through chop, and what to fade on relief pops, exactly the filter you need heading into Q4.

8. Tokenomics red flag: Quick checklist I use: 1) real cashflows to holders, 2) hard schedule of supply (and who unlocks when), 3) non-speculative demand drivers, 4) counter-cyclical buybacks funded by fees (not treasury), 5) deep, planned liquidity after incentives end. Nail those and price has a reason to stick. Ignore them and you’re just renting a pump.

That’s it for today frens!

Thank you for sticking around, your future self will thank you.
You can follow me on X @CryptoShiro_.

Find more Alpha on my Telegram & Instagram here: linktr.ee/cryptoshiro.

If you like to learn and share knowledge about crypto, feel free to share this post!

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Nothing here is financial advice; it is purely for informational purposes.

There is no collaboration with the projects mentioned in this edition.

GM frens,

Crypto is green this week. BTC pushed through prior range highs and is holding above key resistance. ETH bounced strong after a sharp rejection, and the board has shifted into full optimism. Feels like a clean “restart” for the market.

Polymarket now price a 91% chance of a 25bps Fed cut next week👇

That’s already priced in, so if Powell only trims by a quarter, expect pain but if 50 hits, the pump continues. Meanwhile, Jobs came in soft and unemployment ticked up, paradoxically bullish for liquidity. On top, Wall Street delivered: S&P 500 pushed to new ATHs, Nasdaq held flat, a very strong week for trad markets.

For the first time since December 2024, the Altcoin Season Index has flipped into Altcoin Season.

On paper, that’s bullish, but I’d frame it as a “wait and see” moment. Daily volumes are still light, leverage is skewed long, and that mix often attracts sharp reversals. The real tell will come after the Fed’s meeting next week. If liquidity flows keep building, this could be the early stages of a proper altseason. If not, it may just be another September head-fake before things cool off again.

By the way, I was quite confident for a bullish September, when many were screaming for a “cycle top”. Everything was explained in these newsletter intros, like in the last one.

And also here:

Anyway, let’s keep going with the market updates.

Institutions keep sliding further into the market, and the ETF flows make it obvious. Over the week, BTC ETFs saw solid net inflows; ETH ETF flows were choppier but improving around strength. That kind of demand is enough to push BTC through resistance levels and keep ETH sticky near the top of its range.

At the same time, the possible limits of these products are showing. The SEC has delayed BlackRock’s Ethereum staking proposal to October 30 and Franklin Templeton’s Solana/XRP ETFs to November 14. Current ETH ETFs still don’t offer staking yield, which makes them less attractive long term. Without staking rewards baked in, the product feels incomplete, and institutions will be waiting for that greenlight before really leaning in.

Zooming out, JPMorgan’s latest read is that institutional adoption is still in its early phase. The GENIUS Act gave the clarity big money needed, and record CME activity shows pros are stepping in. They estimate institutions now hold about a quarter of Bitcoin ETPs (exchange-traded products, like ETFs or notes that give BTC exposure), with surveys showing most firms already allocating or planning to this year. Since GENIUS, ETH and SOL have joined BTC as leaders. JPMorgan also expects stablecoins to plug into traditional finance rails and speed up tokenization, a shift even former skeptics are starting to back.

At the same time, the MicroStrategy story shows how far traditional finance still has to go. The company missed out on S&P500 inclusion, losing to Robinhood, a reminder that Wall Street isn’t fully comfortable with balance sheets heavily tied to BTC yet. But if anything, that tension underlines the long runway ahead: institutions are testing the waters, flows are picking up, and the resistance is about timing..

Sentiment trackers read neutral (47), which is exactly where I like it, skepticism plus strong price action is usually fuel, not a ceiling.

That’s the backdrop for today’s deep dive. As liquidity returns, the first stop is the “serious” RWAs (bills, bonds, real estate).

The next stop, where it gets interesting, is the exotic side, where culture and finance meet. Collectibles, fashion, cars: assets that already move billions off-chain, now getting on-chain rails that compress trust, speed, and reach.

This week, I’m zooming into Exotic RWAs: cards, closets, and cars.

Let’s dive 👇

Before we dive in this Week’s Newsletter

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This Week’s Newsletter dives deep into:

• Deep Dive on Exotic RWAs: Cards, Closets, and Cars.

• X Alpha.

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1/ Deep Dive on Exotic RWAs: Cards, Closets, and Cars

I’ve covered the classic side of RWAs before in this newsletter also with Plume, Maple Finance, even Mantra, which didn’t end well.

I’ve already stepped into the exotic lane with Non Kyoto Protocol and Artrade ($ATR): $NKP tokenizes carbon credits, opaque, policy-driven, hard-to-price environmental claims, while $ATR brings fine art on-chain, subjective, illiquid, and custody-dependent. Both sit outside standardized RWA rails, which is exactly why they’re “exotic.”

I also covered IP back in Dec ‘24 when Story Protocol had no token and was basically “RWA for ideas”, licensing, royalties, and data as on-chain assets. Since then it’s gone from thesis to liquid market: Story launched mainnet and the $IP token, ripped on listing, and now sits in the top-50 by market cap with renewed momentum (even with the controversies around low revenue and the Co-founder Jason Zhao stepping back from his full-time role).

We are not going to talk about these Exotic RWA projects again here, even though I post often about $NKP on my X account as it’s one project I support closely.

Quick reminder on what I mean by Exotic RWAs:

Traditional RWAs are bonds, real estate, and commodities, mature rails, transparent pricing, clear rulebooks. Exotic RWAs push beyond that into assets that used to be illiquid or clubby: collectibles and fine art, music and IP royalties, carbon credits, litigation finance, even niche private equity.

Tokenizing them brings access, programmability, and speed. The upside is fresh diversification, global participation, and real product innovation. The trade-off is messier valuation, thinner secondary liquidity, and legal grey zones, exactly where the edge often lives.

This umbrella is huge. I’m not turning this into a phonebook, so I’m narrowing to what’s most actionable today, lanes with real traction, clear mechanics, and distinct risk profiles. That’s why I’m focusing on this :

• TCG: the clearest on-chain PMF right now, culture meets gacha, instant buybacks keep inventory flying, and streamers pour fuel on the fire.

• FITCOIN: a play on fashion. Start with a fun, sticky app for users. Build a moat with real data. Then launch a resale market where closets turn into tradable inventory.

• CryptoAutos: the test case for RWAs. Ownership, custody, and usage must be rock solid. If the cars actually run and the cashflows go to wallets, then it’s a real business, not just a pitch.

Let’s dig in 👇

Trading Card Games (TCG) - From cardboard to collateral

I already broke down the basics in my post on X: how tokenization turns trading cards into instantly tradable, authenticated assets. I won’t rehash the mechanics here.

Let’s go deeper into the cultural roots, the business dynamics, and why TCGs might be one of the most powerful Exotic RWA wedges for crypto.

A cultural asset class hiding in plain sight

Pokémon, Yu-Gi-Oh, Magic: The Gathering, for decades these weren’t just games, they were self-contained economies. Scarcity, rarity tiers, grading standards, and cultural hype created vibrant secondary markets.

• First-edition Charizard cards have sold for over $400k.

• Magic’s “Black Lotus” regularly clears six figures.

• Entire collections have been securitized by funds, with fractionalized shares sold to investors.

Pokémon isn’t just a hobby; it’s a global cultural phenomenon, blending TV, games, and collectibles. Collectors built private vaults, hedge funds experimented with art- and card-backed funds, and auction houses like Sotheby’s legitimized the market.

Today, the TCG market is valued around $8B annually, while the wider collectibles industry (sneakers, art, comics, sports cards, etc.) sits at a staggering $385B.

That’s already larger than many “alternative assets” that institutional investors allocate to and yet, trading remains fragmented, illiquid, and plagued with counterfeits.

Why crypto is the unlock?

We’ve seen this story before. When NFTs first broke out in 2021, the mainstream dismissed them as jpegs, but what actually made them powerful was the ability to tie culture to finance. That edition of the newsletter already showed how art, music, and gaming IP suddenly became liquid markets because blockchains provided the missing trust layer.

TCGs are following the same trajectory, but with even stronger fundamentals. Unlike generative art or meme JPEGs, these cards already have decades of cultural legitimacy, robust secondary markets, and communities obsessed with rarity. What was missing was the infrastructure to make them frictionless, transparent, and globally accessible.

That’s where blockchain enters:

• Trustless authenticity → No more counterfeit Charizards. An NFT representation tied to a graded card in a vault becomes an indisputable proof of ownership.

• Instant liquidity → Instead of waiting for eBay auctions or auction houses, a card-backed token trades 24/7 like ETH or SOL.

• Programmability → Cards evolve from collectibles into financial assets: fractionalized ownership, lending markets, yield strategies—mechanisms NFTs already proved feasible.

• Global reach → A collector in New York can instantly co-own or trade with someone in Tokyo. The network effect compounds liquidity.

The comparison with the NFT boom is useful: NFTs turned culture digital-first. TCG tokenization turns physical culture into programmable collateral. That’s a much bigger unlock.

And looking forward, this wedge can spill over into the broader collectibles market—sneakers, luxury watches, even vintage electronics, estimated at nearly $400B today. TCGs may just be the “Trojan horse” Exotic RWA category that convinces the world culture is finance.

The platforms building the rails

Now that the potential is clear and crypto is already bending the rules of how collectibles trade, the real story is about the players trying to seize this moment. They’re not just tokenizing cardboard; they’re each pushing to own the rails of an entire cultural asset class, and each one is betting on a slightly different model.

Collector Crypt ($CARDS):

What it is: A crypto-native Solana marketplace where graded cards are vaulted, minted as NFTs, tradable on-chain, and fed by a “gacha” pack flow with instant sell-backs at a posted discount. The $CARDS token wraps the venue with perks (rakeback/rewards now; pack access/burns teased).

Why it matters: This is the most direct liquid bet on the TCG RWA meta. Public dashboards and community reporting show eight-figure monthly gacha flow, with net take driven by buyback policy and marketplace fees. They’ve already shown meaningful revenues pre-token, and the next unlock is cards-as-collateral (lending against cards). If that ships with sane LTVs and liquidation rails, $CARDS stops being “just a marketplace token” and starts looking like the exchange layer for cultural collateral.

Courtyard:

What it is: A Polygon platform that packages real, graded Pokémon cards into on-chain “packs,” publishes clear odds and an instant buyback price (~high-80s to ~90% of reference), and lets users keep assets vaulted or redeem to door.

Why it matters: It’s the Web2 → on-chain bridge. Courtyard optimizes for trust and UX (grading partners, clear economics, fiat-friendly flows), which is exactly what pulls in eBay/PSA-native collectors. Their buyback quote is the engine that keeps packs turning without users touching legacy logistics, critical for scaling beyond the crypto-native crowd.

Beezie:

What it is: A collectibles venue that leans into gamification: claw-style drops (TAG Claw), gachas across IPs, and “Rip-N-Ship” for live openings, then one-click ship, donate, or list. Everything sits on insured vaulting and fast resale.

Why it matters: It’s an engagement-first project. If dopamine-led formats consistently bootstrap liquidity and creator-led streams keep fresh flow coming, Beezie proves that “fun → flow → fees” is enough to stand up an Exotic-RWA marketplace before heavy institutional trust shows up.

Phygitals:

What it is: A smaller marketplace on Solana focused on Pokémon and other collectibles. breaking new ground by supporting both graded and ungraded cards (as well as sealed products!), with the goal of making collecting more transparent, accessible, and inclusive for everyone.

Why it matters: In the world of collectibles, many valuable cards are often tucked away, out of sight. With Phygitals, collectors can actively explore and make offers on cards, even if they’re not currently listed for sale. This feature opens up new opportunities for both buyers and sellers, helping to connect and trade more efficiently.

phygitals has many more perks but connecting collectors is probably the biggest. Creating new opportunities for buyers & sellers. Also phygitals is big on the chinese market, which is noteworthy.

The takeaway

• Collector Crypt is monetization-first.

• Courtyard is trust-first.

• Beezie is engagement-first.

• Phygitals is speed-and-focus-first.

Rails are still fragmented, that’s where the alpha is. Whoever fuses liquidity, trust, and fun in one place won’t just “win Pokémon”; they’ll set the template for how culture trades on-chain.

Why this is powerful?

• It already works: Packs sell out, cards get sold back fast, platforms make money.

• The loop is simple: Gacha + instant buybacks = constant action without waiting for slow P2P trades.

• Content = demand: Streamers rip packs on camera and that turns into 24/7 buying and selling.

• The moat is offline: The hard part to copy is sourcing real cards, grading, vaults, and smooth shipping, not the code.

• Clear room to grow: Add new IPs (sports, MTG), new formats (pack battles), lending against cards, and better pricing/data feeds.

• Clean token angle: There’s basically one liquid bet right now, $CARDS; if fees/buybacks tie in, the upside can compound.

Where this goes next, and my take

Here’s the clean upside case once the rails harden:

• Collateral loops: I can borrow stablecoins against a PSA-10 Charizard and put that capital to work. That’s just DeFi with assets I can hold in my hand.

• Fractional access: Grails like Black Lotus or first-edition Pokémon don’t need to sit in a vault for whales only. Funds and DAOs can split them and open the door to thousands of smaller owners.

• On-chain play: Cards don’t have to idle. They can plug into on-chain TCG mechanics so ownership carries in-game power and instant market liquidity at the same time.

• Institutional crossover: If auction houses and funds leaned into NFTs in 2021, they can run tokenized TCG drops next. That flips the legitimacy switch fast.

The cultural demand exists, the revenue engines already spin, and crypto tightens the loop: culture becomes collateral, entertainment turns into liquidity, collectibles act like finance.

Exotic RWAs only work when they capture both culture and cash flow. TCGs do. They have global fandoms, real secondary markets, and crypto-native monetization loops that actually move money. That’s why I see TCGs as the first Exotic RWA wedge with real mass-market potential. The PMF shows up in the numbers, not just in a deck.

I’m watching $CARDS and the rest closely, not because cardboard is magical, but because this is the clearest example of crypto financializing culture at scale.

With that set, I’m shifting to two other projects built on the same idea, different rails.

$FITCOIN - Turning Closets into the Heartbeat of a Fashion Economy

Okay, let me walk you through why I'm watching Fitted and why I think it can actually change how we think about fashion and crypto.

Fitted is simple on the surface: an app where you digitize your wardrobe. Snap photos of your clothes, the AI tags them by brand, style, and color, and suddenly you’ve got a digital closet. From there you can build outfits, plan looks, or just see everything you own in one place.

Breakthrough

The real unlock is habit. Fitted isn’t just about storing photos of your clothes, it’s about creating a daily ritual. Logging an outfit becomes as natural as checking the weather or scrolling X. Once that loop sticks, the data compounds.

The app is growing fast 👈

Every upload is a datapoint: brand, color, fabric, seasonality, usage frequency. Scale that across hundreds of thousands of users, and you end up with something nobody else has, a real-time, bottom-up map of global fashion demand.

To date, Fitted has already crossed 2 million items, with upload velocity near 200k a month, with over $100,000,000 worth of clothing uploaded to Fitted.

If they keep that pace, they’re on track to own the richest live dataset on what people actually wear, what they don’t, and when they trade.

For crypto, it’s the foundation of a new kind of RWA flywheel: closets → data moat → resale rails → token liquidity.

And that’s where $FITCOIN comes in.

The token is wired directly into that loop: rewards for logging outfits, premium access to closet analytics, future payments inside the resale marketplace. Circulating supply is already high (~900M out of 1B total), so the float is real, but the market cap is still in micro territory, just a few million. That means if usage scales, token demand can compound without being drowned in emissions.

The way I see it, $FITCOIN isn’t just a bet on fashion going digital. It’s a bet that daily behavior, snapping your clothes, trading your closet, can become the base layer for a new consumer RWA economy. If the dataset becomes the moat, the token is the toll to access it.

Why It Can Scale ?

Closet apps have proven utility, they save time, help plan outfits, and make wardrobe management effortless. That baseline utility keeps users engaged daily.

On top of that, supply builds itself. Every time a user uploads clothes, the marketplace instantly gains fresh inventory. Liquidity grows naturally without the cold-start problem that kills most platforms.

And for brands, the data is the real goldmine. Anonymous insights into what people actually wear, retire, or rebuy is unmatched. Add crypto rails for instant payments and global reach, and you get a faster, more liquid alternative to Depop or Vinted. There are a few milestones I’m watching closely:

• The free app rollout: That’s the top-of-funnel moment, downloads, daily active users, and upload velocity will tell us if this sticks outside of early adopters.

• The resale marketplace: The key metric here is friction. If listing and selling feels as easy as posting on Instagram and checking out with PayPal, that’s a real flywheel.

• Data partnerships: If brands or aggregators start piloting deals around Fitted’s dataset, it validates the core moat.

• Token mechanics: $FITCOIN only matters if value flows through it, not just as points, but as utility that locks users into the loop.

• Daily outfit logs per active user (habit).

• Provenance view: show the chain of custody on each listing (Creator/celebrity → Seller → You), ideally with on-chain receipts. This boosts trust and lets “owned-by” status command a premium without manual 👇

The secondhand fashion market is projected to hit $350B by 2028.

Even if Fitted captures just 0.5% of that, that’s $1.75B in GMV. With a modest 5% take rate, you’re looking at $90M in annual revenue. Push even 20% of that through $FITCOIN, and you’re suddenly talking millions in token-linked flow, on day one of real execution.

Risks to Keep in Mind

• Retention risk – Closet apps only work if people keep logging outfits. If uploads slow or users get bored of repeating looks, engagement drops.

• Privacy hesitation – Asking people to digitize their entire wardrobe is personal. Without strong incentives and clear data handling, some users may hesitate.

• Marketplace trust – Shipping delays, damaged goods, or bad return policies can break confidence fast, and once trust slips, liquidity dries up.

• Copycat pressure – The model is easy to clone. The real moat has to come from scale, a unique dataset, and monetizing it better than competitors.

My Take

For me, Fitted is one of the clearest examples of culture meeting finance in a way that doesn’t feel forced. The hook is simple but the flywheel is deep: habits create data, data powers resale, and the token binds it all together.

Once the loop runs, the money lines stack naturally: anonymized demand data brands actually want (what’s worn vs what sits), marketplace fees at resale scale, and a gamified layer, think gacha-style reveals for limited collabs or perks. That’s where it jumps from utility to culture, and culture to cash flow.

If they nail the experience and keep the loops tight, this has the chance to grow into more than just a consumer app. It’s a real wedge into a new kind of fashion economy, where your closet isn’t just where you keep your clothes , it’s an asset, a data stream, and in some ways, a wallet. That’s the bet with $FITCOIN: that the everyday act of getting dressed can anchor an ecosystem with billion-dollar upside.

However, I’m not buying. Why?
Because I think the website & the app have poor design, they’re quite ugly tbh. And obviously design is important in fashion, so I doubt an ugly app about fashion will attract fashion people, sneaker addicts, etc.
Also no information about the team on the website, I don’t have enough trust that they will deliver.

It’s a small Mcap, so the upside potential is here (not too hard to pump such tokens), but I don’t like it enough for a long-term hold. But it’s still a cool idea I wanted to share, and it can become better.

But for now, it all looks too amateur for me, for such a cool idea.

$AUTOS - Exotic RWAs on the road

For years, crypto has circled around the idea of Real World Assets. Most projects went for the “serious” stuff: treasuries, bonds, real estate. Useful, but not exactly exciting.

Cars are different. They’re culture. They’re aspiration. They’re collectibles, rental income machines, and status symbols all at once. From Ferrari’s client programs to luxury rental clubs in Dubai, cars have always blended finance with lifestyle.

CryptoAutos is about bringing that world on-chain. $AUTOS isn’t just a token, it’s the key to a car-powered ecosystem, where ownership, rentals, perks, and community all flow through crypto rails.

That’s why I’m watching this closely: it’s one of the first attempts to turn RWAs into something exotic, emotional, and liquid at the same time.

The Garage and Parking

Here’s how it works:

• The Garage is the hub: the onchain home for your $AUTOS.

• Parking is the mechanism: like staking, but built around loyalty, scarcity, and rewards.

Instead of just passively earning yield, parking feels more like joining a private car club. You lock tokens, and in return you get tiered perks: up to 55% APY, discounts on rentals, Zebec fuel card credits, car raffles, concierge perks, even mystery drops.

The mechanics matter too. Parking takes supply off the market, compounding scarcity. Rewards themselves lock on payout, so fresh emissions don’t instantly hit circulation. And over time, marketplace revenues loop back into buybacks and burns. Utility + deflation = a reflexive system.

Why It Fits Exotic RWAs

Clothes, cards, sneakers, they’re all cultural assets that crypto has started to bring on-chain. Cars are one of the few assets that naturally blur the line between finance and culture. They hold resale value like art, generate cash flow like property when rented, and carry brand prestige that rivals luxury fashion. That mix makes them ideal candidates for tokenization.

What $AUTOS is really doing is packaging all of that into a system that runs on-chain. A Ferrari in Dubai isn’t just a car anymore, it can be a yield-bearing token, a raffle prize, or even fractional ownership tied into a marketplace. Instead of staying locked in a garage IRL, the value circulates: rentals, perks, and loyalty benefits flow back into the token economy.

Structurally, think a KYC’d SPV per car with on-chain receipts; tokens reflect your share, rental income streams pro-rata, and redemptions/secondary trades clear against a transparent book.

This is why I call it exotic RWA. It’s not another treasury bill protocol. It’s taking something aspirational, high-emotion, and scarce, and making it liquid, programmable, and accessible to a global base of users. That’s very different: people don’t dream about owning bonds, but they do dream about owning (or even just driving) a Lamborghini.

Why It Can Scale

The supercar rental industry alone is already a multi-billion market.

Add crypto rails and you get instant settlement, global fractional ownership, and perks that scale via community, not geography.

Start with the low-friction layer payments and dealer integrations then graduate to tokenized ownership and rental yield. If they tokenize fleets and stream income back to holders, you get a real cars → cashflow → token loop.

This is exactly where most “car tokens” have failed, title custody, insurance, utilization, and resale markets. But if CryptoAutos delivers transparent dashboards showing utilization rates, net yield, and buyback flow while keeping KYC clean, it shifts from narrative hype to a functioning business.

And once the foundation is in place, the revenue stack grows naturally: marketplace fees on rentals and purchases, partnerships with luxury brands, car raffles, even fractional slices of ownership. Each new layer compounds culture and cashflow straight into $AUTOS.

My Take

Just being able to buy & rent cars with crypto is big.
But what makes $AUTOS stand out to me is how it ties aspiration directly into utility. Luxury cars aren’t a niche, they’re a $50B+ global rental and resale industry, and brands like Ferrari sit on valuations north of $7B just from reputation and scarcity alone. That mix of culture, cashflow, and brand power is exactly why cars work as Exotic RWAs.

If CryptoAutos can turn that industry into an on-chain system where tokens unlock perks, yield, and access, then $AUTOS becomes more than a speculative play, it’s the connective tissue between real cars, digital liquidity, and community. The Garage Launch is the first real test: if parking gains traction, it proves there’s appetite for a model where scarcity and rewards reinforce each other.

The risks are execution and regulation. Custody of titles, insurance frameworks, and proving yield transparency are hard problems. But if those are solved, $AUTOS could be one of the few RWA tokens where people actually want to hold for reasons beyond yield: culture, status, and real-world flex.

That’s why I’m watching it closely. If the loops tighten and the roadmap hits, $AUTOS won’t just ride the RWA trend, it could set the tone for how lifestyle assets get financialized on-chain.

2/ X Alpha 🫡

1. Crypto × Robotics: Robotics narrative just got its own category on CoinGecko, exactly the kind of early signal I flagged 2 weeks ago with $CODEC in this newsletter. Volatility is the play here, but the bigger picture is what matters, retail now has liquid access to a multi-trillion-dollar future trend at tiny caps. This is just the start of the Robotics arc. 🫡

2. $HYPE ATH: When I broke down Hyperliquid in May, the setup was simple: real revenue, aggressive buybacks, and an onchain product eating into CEX market share. That thesis hasn’t changed, it’s only been validated. We’re now sitting at ATHs, with $HYPE commanding ~70% of perp DEX volume over the past 30 days. Still bullish on $HYPE.

3. Binance Alpha: Good post. We covered $BNB a few weeks ago, but Alpha is its own beast. It looks like “early discovery,” yet most launches end as PnD: 2.5–5% supply dumped on Alpha farmers, communities sidelined. Good if you’re chasing short-term $4K airdrops like $MYX. Bad if you expect sustainable growth, Alpha listings don’t even guarantee Spot.

4. $HUB close to TGE: I mentioned HUB months ago, back when it was still building trust through simple tools. Since then, they’ve turned AI training into culture with half a million participants and real traction.Now it’s finally near TGE. For me this isn’t just another AI token launch, it’s a community-powered play with narrative, data, and brand. I think it can capture serious mindshare once it hits markets.

5. Revenue meta: This one is very interesting, DeFi protocols are finally starting to reward token holders directly with revenue. That shift is key.

   It means teams are aligning incentives again, moving away from pure inflation and farming mechanics. In past cycles, revenue talk was niche; now it’s becoming the standard. That’s bullish for sustainability, token demand, and the whole “real yield” narrative.

6. Bidding War for $USDH: This one feels huge. Whoever secures $USDH becomes the default dollar inside Hyperliquid, meaning every trade, vault, and perp loop runs through them. That’s more than stablecoin adoption, it’s settlement ownership. My alpha → stables aren’t about brand, they’re about distribution. And HL has the deepest on-chain distribution right now. $USDH could be the hidden lever that pushes $HYPE’s revenue and buybacks into another gear.

7. Plebs don’t move markets: Great read. What matters isn’t jobs, it’s liquidity. Weak labor = more cuts = more money flowing into assets. BTC wins when capital compounds, workers lose. Simple but powerful framing for this cycle.

8. WLFI × Justin Sun: This one sums up why exchange “earn” pools are dangerous, yield masked as exit liquidity. If the claims hold, WLFI turns into a case study in trust gaps, where the chart will trade headlines more than fundamentals. Alpha is simple: custody beats APY every time.

9. Sonic: We already covered $S in a past edition, and this update makes the whole thing even more interesting. Liquid rewards, shorter snapshots, and a US expansion backed with serious capital could turn Sonic into one of the few projects truly bridging DeFi and TradFi. Worth watching.

10. Pump × Revenue Meta: We flagged $PUMP in a past edition as part of the broader revenue meta, and this chart nails why it still matters. On a pure fundamentals lens, revenue vs. FDV/MC, it screens cheap relative to the big names. If revenue keeps compounding, that gap has room to close, and in this market fundamentals finally seem to matter again.

11. Some news on Helium: A few months back we covered $HNT as one of the tokens inside Solana’s stack, and these updates give it fresh weight. Early investor supply overhang is getting cleared, buybacks are set to channel off-chain revenue into the token, and dilution talks are shelved. Cleaner token dynamics + Solana narrative tailwind = a setup worth watching.

That’s it for today frens!

Thank you for sticking around, your future self will thank you. You can follow me on X @CryptoShiro_.

Find more Alpha on my Telegram & Instagram here: linktr.ee/cryptoshiro.

If you like to learn and share knowledge about crypto, feel free to share this post!

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Nothing here is financial advice; it is purely for informational purposes.

There is no collaboration with the projects mentioned in this edition.

GM frens,

CT is crying bearish again… which, tbh, is my favorite bull signal.

When the timeline panics, I go back to my read and my plan.

For three years CT has “called the top” on every little dip. Same playbook this week: loud takes about cycle over, mega correction, time to exit even spot. If that were true, it would be the first cycle ever to end with cautious sentiment, zero euphoria, dominance still above 50%, no blow-off in large-cap memes, and ETH printing a fresh ATH and quitting after the first pullback.

Structurally, I like where we are. BTC can range and give room to alts. ETH keeps pulling liquidity down the stack. Treasuries and funds continue to build exposure. Seasonality into fall helps, and if Nasdaq presses fresh highs again, that’s a clean tailwind for ETH 5K+ and a broader alt push.

Not a single Market Cycle Top Indicator has been triggered yet.

But as always, I remain cautious. Unexpected events can change the narrative.
You need to make your own thesis and turn bearish if needed.

A thread showing different point of views on the market 👈

A bull September case 👈

Summer 2025 was lively, I actually didn’t expect so many events.
We got the Genius Act opening doors, we saw the emergence of DAT companies (A Digital Asset Treasury is a publicly traded company whose main business is buying and holding cryptocurrencies), we got a very volatile price action, we got Trump launching a new token, we got many people giving their opinion on everything.

Which brings me to today’s focus. When everyone screams into the void, opinions blur. The cleanest way to cut the noise is to price the question.

That’s why I’m zooming in on prediction markets, the place where takes turn into odds and the crypto rails fade into the background. This is no longer gambling, they’re simple for users, powerful for signal, and sneaky-good for adoption because people show up to bet on outcomes they already care about.

Let’s dive into the case study 👇

Before we dive in this Week’s Newsletter

I curate CT Content on X.
Find new projects early. Don’t miss anything!

Have a look at one of my latest posts:

I’m posting daily Live Alpha on my Telegram Channel 👇

Alpha Now

My Linktree to have access to all my Content & Alpha on X, Instagram & Telegram: https://linktr.ee/cryptoshiro

This Week’s Newsletter dives deep into:

• Case Study on Prediction Markets – Polymarket and the new frontier of onchain forecasting

• X Alpha

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1/ Case Study: Prediction Markets

I said in a past edition that prediction markets would soon be on the agenda. That time has arrived 👇

Prediction markets are moving from niche experiments to mainstream conversation. Markets that let people wager on political outcomes, interest rate decisions, or cultural events are influencing headlines, shaping narratives, and even informing professional forecasters.

What makes this shift remarkable is how invisible the crypto layer has become. Most users engaging with prediction markets today don’t care about wallets, gas, or oracles, they just see a price that reflects what the crowd believes will happen.

That simplicity is what makes them such a powerful wedge for adoption: a gateway where opinions turn into financial positions, and the underlying rails are abstracted away.

Act 0 - What is a Prediction Market?

At its core, a prediction market is just a place where people bet on future events. Instead of vague opinions or polls, money is on the line.

Here’s how it works: imagine a market on “Will Candidate X win the election?”. Traders can buy two types of shares: Yes or No. Each share is worth $1 if you’re right, $0 if you’re wrong.

• If “Yes” trades at 72 cents, that means the market is signaling a 72% chance Candidate X will win.

• If the event happens, “Yes” holders get $1 per share. If it doesn’t, those shares expire worthless.

Poll answers are free; being wrong in a market costs money. That incentive pushes participants to seek better information and update quickly, compressing scattered beliefs into one number that moves in real time.

There are two ways these markets run:

• Off-chain (centralized) models operate like conventional websites: an operator lists events, holds user funds, matches orders, and decides the official result. The upside is familiar UX; the trade-off is reliance on a single entity and the legal limits of its jurisdiction.

• On-chain (decentralized) models encode the rules in smart contracts and use independent oracles to bring the real-world outcome onchain. Custody and settlement are transparent and auditable, and no single party can switch the system off. The trade-off is onboarding complexity (wallets, stablecoins) and the need to design robust resolution processes.

In practice, most platforms today use hybrids: fast off-chain matching for smoother UX, with on-chain settlement for trust and transparency.

To make this concrete, I’ll focus on Polymarket as the main case study.

It’s not just the largest crypto prediction market, it’s also the one that proved demand can scale globally, survived regulatory pressure, and forced the entire sector to be taken seriously. By studying Polymarket’s rise, we can understand both the strengths and the frictions shaping this new wave of prediction markets.

If analogies help for you, this Decrypt piece nails it: it uses a $3M Darth Vader lightsaber auction to show how information behaves like an asset and prediction markets are the exchange that prices it in real time.

Act I - A Timeless Instinct

The instinct to price the future has been with us since antiquity. Long before digital exchanges, people built systems to wager on uncertain outcomes.

In Renaissance Venice, lotteries were not just games of chance but civic rituals. Citizens bet on political appointments, papal elections, and state decisions. Wagers provided both entertainment and a way to voice expectations about governance.

By the 18th century, London’s coffeehouses became proto-exchanges. At Jonathan’s Coffee House, which later evolved into the London Stock Exchange, merchants speculated on wars, royal succession, even the weather. These informal odds often reflected public sentiment more accurately than censored newspapers or official decrees.

At the same time in Japan, the Dojima Rice Exchange formalized futures markets. What began as hedging against crop failure soon turned into bets on government policies, taxation, and imperial reforms. Traders weren’t just insuring harvests, they were effectively speculating on state decisions.

In the 19th century United States, “bucket shops” let retail speculators bet on the direction of stocks or commodities without owning them. Regulators tried to shut them down, but for many ordinary citizens this was their first contact with forecasting markets, blending gambling and financial speculation.

By the late 20th century, bookmakers like Ladbrokes and Paddy Power in the UK and Ireland brought political betting into the mainstream. Their odds on elections and referendums were quoted in newspapers and discussed on television alongside polling averages, giving campaigns and investors an alternative measure of public belief.

Across time and geography, the pattern repeats. Whether through Venetian lotteries, London coffeehouses, Osaka rice pits, American bucket shops, or British bookmakers, people have always turned uncertainty into tradeable wagers. Prediction markets are simply the newest expression of this timeless instinct, faster, global, and now powered by crypto rails.

Act II - From Intrade to Polymarket

The internet supercharged these instincts. Intrade, launched in 2001 in Dublin, became the first widely recognized online prediction market. It offered contracts on everything from U.S. presidential elections to whether North Korea would launch a missile, or even if the space shuttle would take off on time.

During the 2008 U.S. elections, Intrade exploded into public consciousness. Its markets on Obama vs. McCain often proved more accurate than major polls, updating in real time as new information hit the headlines. Journalists cited Intrade odds daily on CNN, CNBC, and in The New York Times. For a moment, it seemed like prediction markets had gone mainstream.

But its centralized structure was a fatal weakness. Intrade required users to wire money to Ireland, held all custody, and resolved results itself. In 2012, the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission accused it of operating an unlicensed derivatives exchange, and by 2013 the platform was forced to close.

PredictIt, launched later by Victoria University in New Zealand, tried to stay compliant by operating under a research exemption. It attracted a loyal user base of academics, journalists, and retail traders who used its political markets as real-time polling alternatives. But in 2022, the CFTC withdrew its no-action relief, forcing PredictIt to wind down as well.

These failures proved two things. First, demand was undeniable: millions of dollars flowed into political markets whenever they were accessible. Second, centralized operators couldn’t survive in contested regulatory environments.

Crypto offered a different architecture. Augur (Ethereum, 2015) proved that fully permissionless prediction markets were possible, but the first iterations were slow, thinly liquid, and hard to use; v2 improved mechanics, yet UX and resolution times still kept mainstream users away. Gnosis contributed early to market tooling before pivoting toward broader infra (Safe, CoW Protocol, payments), leaving room for a consumer-first entrant.

That entrant was Polymarket (founded 2020). It took a pragmatic hybrid approach: keep settlement onchain for credibility, but run a fast central limit order book offchain for matching; denominate markets in USDC on Polygon for speed; and use UMA’s Optimistic Oracle to resolve outcomes with an auditable escalation path. The effect is a product that feels like a modern trading app while retaining verifiable, onchain settlement, without forcing newcomers through crypto’s heaviest UX friction.

Polymarket still had to navigate regulators: in 2022 the CFTC fined the company $1.4 million and required it to restrict U.S. access.

Even so, the model, onchain credibility plus web-speed UX, set it apart from the earlier generation and positioned it to become the default venue for onchain prediction. (We’ll quantify that shift in the next section.)

Act III - The Numbers

In its early days (2020–2021), the app looked like a niche experiment. Most markets revolved around COVID case counts or the 2020 U.S. election, daily volume rarely broke $1 million, and the active base was still below 10,000 traders.

Then came the first regulatory hurdle. In 2022, the CFTC fined Polymarket $1.4M and forced it to restrict U.S. access. Instead of collapsing, the platform leaned into international markets and still cleared over $100M in annual volume. The lesson was clear: demand wasn’t just an American phenomenon.

By 2023, traction accelerated. New themes like crypto ETF approvals, inflation releases, and geopolitics pushed monthly flow above $20M, with active users topping 50,000. By year’s end, Polymarket was already handling more business than Augur or Gnosis ever managed at their peaks.

The true explosion came in 2024.

• July marked the first $100M+ month, and by the end of that same month turnover had doubled to $213M.

• In August, Bloomberg integrated Polymarket odds into its Terminal, instantly legitimizing the data as part of Wall Street’s toolkit. Monthly volume was closing in on $450M.

• October was the inflection point: election frenzy pushed single-month turnover above $1B, including a record $98M day.

• Across the year, more than $3.5–$3.6B was traded on U.S. election markets alone, and the active trader base swelled past 314,000, with retention at ~45%, far above typical DeFi stickiness.

Institutional recognition quickly followed. In May 2024, Polymarket raised $70M across two rounds (General Catalyst, Founders Fund, with participation from Vitalik Buterin), pushing total funding to around $74M and its valuation above $1B. The Bloomberg Terminal listing cemented its role as more than a crypto novelty.

Crucially, the momentum carried into 2025. Reuters tallied ~$6B traded in H1 alone, showing that activity didn’t vanish once the election cycle ended. The Block recorded $1.16B in June 2025 monthly volume, with active traders fluctuating between ~242k and 286k mid-year. And in August 2025, a new headline catalyst arrived: Donald Trump Jr.’s 1789 Capital invested tens of millions into Polymarket, with Trump Jr. himself joining as an adviser.

Put against the broader gambling industry, the scale is still tiny.

Americans wagered $23.1B on a single Super Bowl in 2024, and global sports betting is forecast to exceed $187B annually by 2030. By contrast, the entire crypto prediction market sector remains under $5B in yearly flow.

That marked Polymarket’s transition from crypto curiosity to mainstream player, with volumes, investors, and distribution that dwarfed every previous attempt at on-chain prediction markets.

Act IV - Friction

Polymarket’s scale makes its weak points more visible.

1) Resolution is still the pressure point:

Every prediction market has to answer the same question: when it’s over, who decides what actually happened?

On Polymarket, that job falls to UMA’s Optimistic Oracle. Here’s how it works in practice: when a market ends, someone submits the result and locks up a bond.

If nobody objects, the outcome is accepted automatically. But if it’s challenged, UMA tokenholders vote on the truth, and the final decision is enforced on-chain. It’s quick when the answer is obvious, like who won an election, but messier when the rules aren’t crystal clear.

That fragility showed up in July 2025, when a market asked if Volodymyr Zelenskyy “wore a suit”.

Traders argued over what counted as a suit, challenges flew in, and the dispute process looked arbitrary. The backlash became a lightning rod for critics of oracle governance. UMA has since tightened its workflows, including whitelisting certain proposers for sensitive markets, but the episode proved how easily credibility can wobble on a single unclear question.

Another exemple 👈

2) Regulation is the constant shadow:

Governments decide how far prediction markets can go.

In 2022, U.S. regulators fined Polymarket $1.4M and forced it to block American users. Two years later, French regulators restricted access during their elections. In India and China, political betting is outright banned.

Even in the U.S., the future is uncertain. Kalshi, the only licensed competitor of Polymarket, has spent years in court trying to prove election markets are legal.

Now Kalshi is a well established player, integrated with Solana.

Regulators allow it to list contracts on rainfall or inflation, but draw the line at politics, calling it a “threat to election integrity.” The case is still ongoing, and its outcome will set the precedent for everyone else.

Until governments decide whether to treat these markets as transparency tools or gambling, regulation will remain the biggest bottleneck.

3) Liquidity is uneven:

The flow of money surges and fades with the news cycle.

In 2024, Polymarket processed more than $3.5B on the U.S. election, with single days above $90M. But outside those peaks, activity shrinks fast. A market on Fed rate cuts in 2025 might only reach a few million. Apple’s headset delays or SpaceX launch milestones often stall under seven figures.

Sports betting is building steadier traction, but politics still dominates. For now, prediction markets feel like “feast or famine”: explosive every few years, thin in between.

Quick aside: there’s a post that perfectly shows why so many Polymarket charts look “down only.” 👈 I’m dropping it here because it’s the same force behind the lumpy liquidity we just covered: attention spike → mispriced day one → volume fades.

4) Perception risk is real:

Even when they work, some markets spark outrage.

In early 2025, bets on California wildfires drew criticism for “profiting off tragedy,” despite providing accurate forecasts. The same happened with COVID death markets in 2020, and more recently with wagers on Israel–Iran tensions or Ukraine’s leadership.

The irony is that these markets often generate useful signals, but optics matter as much as accuracy. A single scandal can damage credibility just as much as regulation.

Perception can also get dented by the “fun bets” that circulate. They’re lighthearted and meme-ish, but from the outside they make prediction markets look like little more than gambling. That’s the danger: if that’s all people notice, they’ll miss the part that actually matters, the serious markets that already move money and inform decisions 👇

5) And then there were memecoins:

In the 2023–24 cycle, politically themed tokens appeared, most notably $BODEN, a satire on Biden’s campaign. They weren’t formal prediction markets, but the dynamic was similar: holding or trading them was a bet on how much narrative energy a candidate could sustain.

Then, in January 2025, $TRUMP launched ahead of the inauguration and became one of crypto’s largest politically driven meme assets. Traders weren’t just speculating on price; they were speculating on politics, identity, and attention itself.

The lesson: memecoins act as informal prediction markets. They let people express conviction on outcomes without rules, settlement, or clear resolution. That makes them powerful at capturing attention, but unreliable as forecasting tools. They prove the appetite for outcome-linked assets while blurring the line between credible prediction and pure speculation.

Act V - Beyond Polymarket: Zoom on Predi.

$PREDI could be a high-risk play for exposure to the prediction markets narrative.

$PREDI rides on PredictBase (on Base) with an X-native bot, PrediBot. You @ the bot under a post and it creates a market; replies become orders. It brings markets to where the attention already is. That’s the edge.

• It meets users in the feed: Distribution beats product. Predi turns X posts into order flow, which is exactly how this category will grow (content → opinion → trade, in one place).

• It isn’t tokenless: Most leaders don’t have a token, such as Polymarket ; Predi does, and it actually burns. Creating a market costs 100 $PREDI (half gets burned). Trading takes ~1% and 25% of those fees go to buyback & burn. Usage shrinks float. That’s clean, direct linkage between activity and token.

• Agent runway is built-in: The stack plugs into Virtuals, so AI agents can create and trade markets 24/7. If “bots as liquidity” is where we’re headed (and I think it is), Predi is wired for it from day one.

• Right place, right funnel: PredictBase is pushing a Base-app mini-app entry (“try it on baseapp”), which, if it sticks, puts Predi in the slipstream of Coinbase distribution. Early, but the direction of travel is right.

But $PREDI is not just about the PrediBot.
It’s also PredictBase, a fully decentralized prediction market built on Base.

PredictBase is the only prediction market integrated into Base App.

If PredictBase captures even a fraction of that flow on BaseApp's 2M+ expected users, $PREDI becomes one of the biggest asymmetric bets in crypto.

And it’s also publicly supported by Jesse, founder of Base.

What I’m watching:

• % of new markets created via PrediBot.

• Volume on PredictBase.

• Net burns over time (100-$PREDI create fees + 25% fee buybacks).

• Agent share of flow as Virtuals-style bots scale.

Risks (priced, but real):

• Narrative-dependent

• Still an underdeveloped narrative — big new entrants could overshadow current smaller participants

• Liquidity is still thin at times, even with strong distribution.

• Market resolution has to stay reliable as volume grows.

• Regulation: Base is crypto-friendly, but policy risk is always there.

This is obviously a high-risk play.

This kind of experimental project in a new narrative is a bit hit-or-miss — it can be quickly forgotten.

If no one actually uses it, it could quickly go to dust. But it could also pump along three narratives: Virtuals/Base, AI Agent, and Prediction Markets.

And there aren’t many good tokens in the prediction markets narrative to get into right now.

Plenty of other projects are building in this narrative, and I can’t cover them all in this newsletter:

Prediction Markets Overview 👈

List by chain 👈

List by smart followers 👈

List by category 👈

The all landscape 👈

Fastest growing Prediction Markets projects on CT 👈

Act VI - The Future

What happens next won’t be a straight line.

Three forces drive it: where markets show up (distribution), how much money sits on them (liquidity), and whether they’re allowed (legitimacy).

1) Sports go first : Sports already have daily habit. Onchain is copying what works in Web2, parlays, pooled liquidity, leverage, but with one big upgrade: borderless liquidity. Instead of 50 state books, you get one global pool. Protocols like SX and Azuro are set up for this.

2) AI traders change the game : Bots are starting to read headlines and place orders. Scale that up and you get tighter spreads, deeper books, faster moves. Markets stop being just places to bet and start looking like live probability feeds. Whoever owns that feed (to humans and agents) wins distribution, think “odds as an API.”

3) Markets move into the feed : The future isn’t opening a new tab. It’s trading inside Telegram, Discord, and X. Tools like Flipr (X), Polycule (Telegram) and of course $PREDI that we mention earlier, turn posts and chats into order flow. That’s a 10× reach boost without paid acquisition. Markets become part of the content stream.

4) Governance gets real : “Vote on values, bet on outcomes” stops being a thought experiment. DAOs and research orgs will unlock grants, prioritize roadmaps, and compare policies using conditional markets. The leap from “Who wins?” to “Which proposal works better?” is small once the rails and oracles exist.

5) Regulation is the wild card : As we saw before, PredictIt is back under a revised U.S. framework, signal that policy can bend. If D.C. ever greenlights political markets, Kalshi can flip the switch inside the U.S. fast. If not, onchain venues keep compounding offshore. Either way, distribution (bots/feeds) and liquidity density are the tells to watch, not just token launches.

And yes, Polymarket, as we saw before, already proved there’s real demand. The next winners will be the ones that own the feed, tighten spreads with bots, and navigate regulation without losing speed.

If you want to go further on predictions 👈

Act VII - My Take

Prediction markets feel different this time. The volumes are big enough that people outside of crypto are paying attention. Every FOMC meeting, you’ll see traders and even journalists checking Polymarket to see what Powell will do, because it updates in real time, faster than polls or analyst notes. That’s already proof the signal matters.

For me, the magic of prediction markets isn’t just trading, it’s trust.

We live in a world where polls are manipulated, headlines spin their own angles, and narratives move faster than facts. But when money is on the line, people cut through the noise. You either put your conviction into the market, or you don’t. That number, that price, becomes a live signal of what the crowd really believes.

That’s why I keep coming back to this sector. It’s one of the clearest cases where crypto doesn’t just build a new casino, it builds better information. Odds update in real time, they compress collective belief into a single data point, and they’re already being used by journalists, traders, and even policymakers.

I also see prediction markets as a test for crypto adoption. If people who have never touched a wallet are willing to use these apps just to express an opinion on politics, sports, or macro, that’s a wedge. It proves you don’t need to sell people “crypto,” you just need to give them a reason to play… and you can play to earn a lot of money .

As an investor, I don’t think the big question is “which app wins”, and the market is so big there will be multiple winners (Even if Polymarket is winning rn). Platforms will come and go, money will rotate. The real edge sits in the rails, liquidity plumbing, resolution quality, and distribution channels. Get the layers right and you’ve got the moat. Understand the algorithm, and you’re already three moves in front.

That’s why I like looking at projects like $PREDI. It’s token-native, tied to actual usage, and focused on where people already are (feeds, bots, social). It’s early, sure, but it’s positioned where we are heading.

So yeah, I’m bullish on prediction markets. Not because they’re fun (though they are), but because they’re one of the few places in crypto where adoption feels inevitable.

2/ X Alpha 🫡

1. Crypto is as safe as planes: This post hit the nail on how the availability heuristic shapes perception in crypto. A few blowups dominate headlines, while billions of safe transactions are ignored. Flying feels risky because crashes stick in memory, even though it’s safer than driving. Same with crypto: one hack can make the whole space look fragile, while the real wins fade away.

2. Stablecoin War: I love this article. Stablecoins aren’t just sidekicks to DeFi, they’re becoming the core rails of global payments. What makes it interesting is the shift: we’re not talking ETH vs SOL anymore, it’s Plasma, Codex, Arc, Monad, Stable, 1Money fighting to be the chain where trillions of stablecoin flows live.

   The real alpha here → users don’t care about decentralisation debates, they just want money that’s fast, cheap, and works everywhere. Whoever nails that becomes the Visa of crypto.

3. The real shift with crypto cards: What hit me in this post is how clear the gap is, most cards just copy fintech, while a few actually leverage crypto’s strengths. EtherFi stacking yield while you spend, Payy going all-in on privacy, Cypher making any token swipeable. That’s the evolution that makes sense, and it shows where real adoption could click.

4. Avalanche & tokenization: Learned a bunch about Avax here and wanted to share. The simple read: they built for institutions, their own lanes (subnets) + native messaging = compliant rails without bridge drama. That turns partnerships into real settlement flow. If it compounds, Avax looks like default RWA plumbing.

5. Bybit × $HYPE staking: We talked about $MNT × Bybit last week. Staking on a big exchange makes coins stick, cuts circulating supply, and pulls in new buyers with one click. Good for depth, good for stickiness, good for $HYPE.

6. Euler levels up: We talked about Euler in a previous edition, Euler Earn is the right next step. Single-asset in, curated strategies out: simpler, stickier deposits and yields that actually look interesting right now. Great update that pushes Euler further into true on-chain banking (with the usual vault/strategy risk—size accordingly).

7. No mask needed: I relate to this a lot. Crypto let me be myself, build, post, take my own Ws and Ls. It’s not always easy, but the freedom + skin in the game beats eight hours of pretending.

8. Follow the money: $255M raised last week. My alpha: shadow the lead VCs, not the headlines. When you see “pilot live,” “points program,” or “fee switch on,” that’s usually the entry before CT wakes up

9. USDe’s home field: Very interesting data. We talked about Ethereal in a precedent edition. Ethereal makes USDe a venue, not just an asset. Native DEX = tighter spreads, fees kept in-house, incentives that don’t leak. With a broad depositor base already, the unlock is simple: default routing + market makers park size → TVL turns into sticky volume.

10. Polymarket odds on the next $HYPE drop: Small shot for Sept, ~1/4 into year-end, I lean Q4. S1 landed late Nov with ~31% supply, and there’s still a big S2 pool (~38.9%) to distribute while Hyper keeps routing ~97% of fees into buybacks. No rush to dilute when the engine is printing. I’d price Dec > 26% here.

11. $SERV update: I’ve covered this project a few times already on X, and the reason is simple: each drop from OpenServ adds weight to the thesis. Real infra, recurring burns, enterprise-grade AI stack, all at a $50M mcap. Feels like one of the few AI plays where the loop actually works.

That’s it for today frens!

Thank you for sticking around, your future self will thank you.
You can follow me on X @CryptoShiro_.

Find more Alpha on my Telegram & Instagram here: linktr.ee/cryptoshiro.

If you like to learn and share knowledge about crypto, feel free to share this post!

Share

Nothing here is financial advice; it is purely for informational purposes.

There is no collaboration with the projects mentioned in this edition.

GM frens,

Back from vacation, did a clean 2× by basically doing nothing. When the market is kind, I trust my winners and let them cook.

If you’ve been reading this newsletter, I already walked through $XMW, $SERV, $AVM, $NKP, $CODEC in earlier issues.

We just had Powell’s speech and the market treated it like a green light, crypto pumped during and after. His tone read friendly to risk, so the vibe into year-end is better.

We’re in a calm zone after a big push. That kind of quiet can flip into a bear trap.

ETH still has the heat. Confidence is back on the network: you can feel the institutional FOMO. More assets are getting tokenized, more ETH is getting staked, security keeps thickening. ETH tagged a new ATH, cooled off, and that zone is now the battleground, same vibe as BTC wrestling with 100k. I’m expecting a few clean retests there before the next leg.

Zooming out, this feels more like Ethereum season than full altseason. Alt mcap hit a new high mostly because of ETH.

My read: the altseason index isn’t overheated, which fits a slow liquidity slide into alts as macro eases into late 2025.

Strong lanes keep leading, RWA, oracles, DEX, the better L1s. Weak narratives still look weak. Flows lead and prices follow.

BTC looks fine, but short-term it’s giving room to alts. Dominance rolled off highs ( ~65% to ~58%), and that spread went straight into the rest of the market.

Institutions set the tone first and retail usually shows up at round numbers (think BTC > 150k, ETH > 5k). Active BTC addresses are low and may stay low because a lot of exposure now comes through ETFs, different structure than past cycles. It’s increasingly a real reserve of value.

You can feel exchanges warming up again. In August, ETH futures open interest pushed toward $60B (a record) as traders piled back in, and BTC futures positioning stayed heavy across venues. Stablecoin fuel is building too, supply is climbing this month, which usually means more dry powder sitting on exchanges, ready to move.

Exchange tokens sit right in the middle of that flow. When people trade more, the exchange earns more fees. When fees rise, the token tends to benefit, bigger burns and buybacks, fee discounts matter more, and perks (tiers, staking, access) get valuable. If the exchange runs its own chain, that same token is also the gas, so more on-chain activity naturally pulls more demand.

Simple loop: activity → fees → token demand.

With ETH still leading and liquidity starting to slide down the stack, the venues routing that traffic tend to feel it first, you see it in volumes, then in revenues, then in the token. That’s why I’m digging into CEX tokens today, with a zoom on $BNB, $OKB and $MNT.

Let’s dive in 👇

Quick note: this intro was written after Powell’s speech, while the deep dive was drafted a few days earlier. A couple prices and datapoints may be 2–3 days old, but the thesis and conclusions still hold.

Before we dive in this Week’s Newsletter

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This Week’s Newsletter dives deep into:

• Deep Dive - Gatekeepers of Demand: The CEX Token Play ($BNB, $OKB, $MNT)

• X Alpha.

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1/ Deep Dive on the Gatekeepers of Demand: The CEX Token Play

If you look at the monthly board for the top 100, it’s mostly red. Only a handful of names are solidly green:

• ENA - riding the stablecoin yield story; Ethena keeps winning mindshare with its cash-and-carry model and aggressive distribution.

• LINK - oracle demand is back; CCIP integrations + a cleaner staking path have put Chainlink in strong momentum.

• PENDLE - the yield-tokenization trade (LRTs, restaking, points) continues to funnel activity into Pendle’s markets.

• ETH - ETF inflows, clarity that LSTs aren’t securities, and the “ETH as a treasury asset” narrative keep the bid alive.

• AERO - Base’s main DEX; as Base grows, Aero rides the flow (more users → more swaps → more fees).

And a few others, but the stand-out group this month is CEX tokens: OKB, MNT and BNB (all green on the month with fresh ATH momentum), and CRO (~+15%). That’s where I’m focusing today: why exchange tokens are getting bid again and how I’m thinking about BNB, OKB, and MNT.

And it’s not just a few tickers. At the sector level, “Exchange Tokens” are one of the only categories firmly positive this month, +23% (Artemis data).